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THE GREAT I-DOL. 



HISTORY OF JAPAN 



IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE 



HELEN AINSLIE SMITH 




ILL USTRA TED 



GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 

New York : 9 Lafayette Place 
London : Broadway, Ludgate Hill 



U.- \::it^ c-.H'.' 



■'\ 



IN UNIFORM STYLE, 

Words of One Syllable. 



ILIiTJSTRATED. 



HIS TOR Y OF ENGLAND. 
HISTORY OF GERMANY. 
HISTORY OF UNITED STATES. 
HISTORY OF FRANCE. 
LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF 

THE UNITED STATES. 
HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
HISTORY OF RUSSIA: 
HIS TORY OF J A PA N. 



George Routledge & Sons, 

9 Lafayette Place, New York. 



-^ 



yo 






Copyright, 1887, 
3y Joseph L. Blamire. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

The First Ra-ces in Ja-pan, . . . . . . 7 

CHAPTER H. 

How THE Ml-KA-DO'S EM-PIRE BE-CAME A REAL NA-TION, . I3 

CHAPTER HI. 
Life and Ways in An-cient Ja-pan, . . ' . . 22 

CHAPTER IV. 

Tales of Ear-ly Wars, ...... 37 

CHAPTER V 

Ja-pan's First For-eign Con-quest,. . . , . .49 

CHAPTER VI. 
How Ja-pan Fell Un-der Mil-i-ta-ry Rule, . . .59 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Rule of the House of Gen,; . . . .„ , 74 

CHAPTER VIIL 

The Ways of War in Feu-dal Times, . . . . .87 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Ways of Peace in Feu-dal Times, . . . . 100 



iv Contents. 



PAGE. 



CHAPTER X. 
The Long Sway of the Ho-jo Clan, . . . .112 

CHAPTER XI. 
A Brief Reign for the Mi-ka-do, . . . . .119 

CHAPTER Xn. 

NiT-TA AND KU-SUN-0-KI, . . . . . . • I30 

CHAPTER Xni. 
The Ash-i-ka-ga Age, . . . . . . . 135 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Hi-de-yosh-i, or the Age of the Tai-ko, . . . .150 

CHAPTER XV. 

I-ye-yas-u and the House of To-ku-ja-wa, . . . 165 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Long Peace, . . . ... . . 179 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age, . . . 192 



HISTORY OF JAPAN. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST RACES IN JAPAN. 

The strong sea winds and the swift sea waves that 
still bear boats and men out of their course to the 
shores of the Ja-pan Isles, were the means, it is 
thought, by which men were first brought there from 
the old realms or tribes of the main land. It is said 
that the swift Black Stream, which flows from far 
out in the Pa-cif-ic up to the Sea of Ja-pan, as well 
as the great storms that vex the coast of A-si-a, 
have long brought boat-loads of folks from the 
south and west to the shores of Ki-u-shi-u, Shi-ko-ku, 
Hon-do, and the rest of the isles that now form the 
south end of the realm of Ja-pan. This land you 
know is made up of four large isles and a great host 
of small ones that lie off the east coast of A-si-a — with 
the Sea of Ja-pan be-tween, and forms a great bow- 
like chain that rounds out in the Pa-cif-ic. Chi-na 
and Co-re-a lie west of its south half, while off 



8 History of Japan. 

Ye-zo and the North part of Nip-pon — the 
isle — the Rus-sian land swells out till the Sea 
is but a strait, and the hills and ports of the Tzar 
get a much more close view of the Mi-ka-do's realm 
than Chi-na has. It was to the south isles that the 
high seas and great winds drove the boat-men of the 
South ; but, in the North lands there were bands of 
wild men who came down of their own will to Ye-zo 
and the isles near by. Some of these were from 
the East shores of A-si-a, and some of them may 
have gone from a long way in-land, where tales had 
spread to them of a land more fair to live in than 
their own, and of much good fish to be caught in 
the seas of these strange lands. It is known for a 
fact that these Ai-ni-noo men dwelt in Ye-zo, and it 
is the sons of their race who still live there. Those 
who first made their homes in Shi-ko-ku and Ki- 
u-shi-u were not from one race, as the men of 
Ye-zo, but came from ma-ny parts of the South of 
A-si-a and formed what we call a mixed race. Some 
time af-ter these men had found their way to Ja-pan, 
but far back in the past, when that great man of the 
Bi-ble, Neb-u-chad-nez-zar, was on the throne of 
Bab-y-lon, there came to the isles a great chief who 
first fought the tribes of wild men of Ki-u-shi-u 
and Shi-ko-ku, who dwelt in small towns, each in 
the rule of a head-man. When he had made them 



The First Races in Japaii. 9 

own him for their chief, he went on to Ye-zo and 
there had more hard fight to set his sway on the 
race from the North. But he won at last, though 
for a long time there was but one way by which they 
could be kept in check ; this was by the force of the 
new chief's vast troops. The strife, which first rose 
more than two thou-sand years a-go, was kept up for 




DO-MES-TIC SCENE. 



scores and scores of years ; but the race of the new 
chief put down their foes in the end, and then all 
the ra-ces on the isles grew to be one, and that was 
the Jap-a-nese. 

This realm, which grew in time to be large and 
great, was first set up by Jim-mu Ten-no, 660 years 



lO History of Japan. 

ere Christ was born, and as it still stands, it is now 
near 2250 years old, and Mut-su-hi-to, the Mi-ka-do 
or great chief, who now sits on its throne, is the 123d 
em-pe-ror of his race. 

Though there are tales of what took place ere 
Jim-mu came and set up his realm in the midst of 
the first men, naught at all is known for fact ere the 
year 660 b. c, and much that is said of Jim-mu and 
some of the sons of his race who came in his 
line for a long time, is naught but tales ; and though 
these form a part of the sto-ry of the growth of the 
realm, all folks on our side of the globe at least, 
know that they must not be read for truth. 

The Jap-a-nese think that heav-en and earth were 
once all one, and that the sun and the moon were god- 
dess-es that were born to a life that has no end, at the 
time when the earth and heav-en first grew to be in 
two parts ; and they think, too, that there were more 
gods and god-dess-es born at this time, and that 
Jim-mu was one of them, and that he came (in the 
year 660) from the great and ho-ly mount of Kir-i- 
shi-ma, which is on the way from Hi-u-ga to O-zu-mi. 
All the Jap-a-nese small folks are taught to look 
with awe on that fair height which lifts its head far 
a-bove the clouds, and to think of the time when the 
god Jim-mu came down to it out of the blue sky of 
heav-en, that seems so near its peak, and set up on 



The First Races in Japan. 



1 1 



earth the realm of the Mi-ka-do, and gave Ja-pan a 
Hhe of em-pe-rors that still sit on its throne. That 
is why all the Jap-a-nese think their em-pe-ror, 
and all his race are born gods and can do no 




BALL GAME. 



wrong, and that their souls go back to dwell in the 
sky when they die. 

The tale is that when Jim-mu had made him-self 
lord of the whole land, his next step was to set up 



12 History of Japa?i. 

his chief town, and for that he chose the site of 
Kash-i-wa-ba-ra, which is some miles from where 
the town of Ki-o-to now stands. Here he set up a 
sort of court, gave states or parts of the realm to 
the charge of his chief men-at-arms, made gifts to 
his troops in pay for their good work with the foe ; 
and set out at once to give peace and good rule to 
his new realm. It was his wish to bring all the folks 
of the land to feel that they were all a part of one 
great state, to put off war-like ways, and to learn 
the arts of peace. He took a wife, the Prin- 
cess Ta-ta-ra, and set the type of a good home- 
life. His rule was long and wise. When he was 
near a hun-dred and thir-ty years old he died and 
left three sons. We can not be at all sure that this 
man dwelt on earth, but the Jap-a-nese have been 
taught to think that he was a real man ; they think 
he is now a god, whom it is part of their faith to love 
and bow down to ; the em-pe-ror now on the throne 
speaks of him as his sire, and claims that he is come 
from Jim-mu, and is his son through a long line in 
which there has been no break. The first year of 
Jap-a-nese his-to-ry is set down as that on which he 
took the throne at Kash-i-wa-ba-ra, and the day is 
kept (like our own 4th of Ju-ly) each year on the 7th 
day of the 4th month, or as we would say, on the 7th 
of A-pril. 



CHAPTER 11, 

HOW THE mikado's EMPIRE BECAME A REAL NATION. 

From the first the Ml-ka-dos have had the right to 
name whom they choose to take the throne when 
they should die or have to leave it ; and though as 
a rule it goes to the first son, the son has to wait for 
his sire to name him or to bide by his will if he 
thinks best to name one of his broth-ers. Jim-mu 
left his throne to one of his three sons when he died. 
He, in turn, left it to one of his sons, and so 
it was with a long line of whom we do not know 
much that is truth, though their names and some 
dates have been kept with great care in the list of the 
Mi-ka-dos ; and one of the first who wrote Jap-a-nese 
his-to-ry tells long tales of their reigns and great 
deeds. Most of them were more than a hun-dred 
years old when they died, and one of them is said to 
have been on the throne for a hun-dred and one 
years. Of all the eight kings who sat on the throne 
in the years that passed from the time of Jim-mu till 
the date when Christ was born in the lands of the 



14 History of Japan. 

West (which was not thought of nor heard of in 
Ja-pan), the chief Mi-ka-do of note was Su-jin, whose 
reign was for more than half the cent-u-ry that came 
to an end with the birth of Christ. He was both 
brave and good, and gave much thought to the gods, 
we are told ; and by him the rough tribes of the isles 
were made much more like a real na-tion than they 
had been ere this. Up to this time the Jap-a-nese 
were but a half-wild host, made up of folks from 
most all the lands near them. They were rude and 
strong, fond of sports, and in all ways much like the 
tribes of the East of those old times; but they left 
off their wild and rough ways more soon than most 
of them. To win in war made a man great and gave 
him strength and force with those who knew him. 
This Su-jin had done in the days of his youth, and 
so he was the more able to lift his folks up when he 
came to be Mi-ka-do, for they felt that they could 
trust him to lead them. It was due to his zeal that 
the old faith of the realm which had come with Jim- 
mu was kept up; for folks had grown not to think 
of their gods by this time; but this prince made 
much of the rites and all that was due to the faith 
of his sires ; and he built it up so strong that from 
that time to this it has kept a great hold on the 
Jap-a-nese. 

The folks had grown in-to some wrong ways since 




A NO-BLE TRAV-EL ING. 



1 6 History of Japan. 

the days of Jim-mu ; they did not think of their 
gods and some of them did not try to do right nor 
to please those who dwelt in the sky, and had sent 
down Jim-mu and his race to live in and rule Ja-pan. 
This gave the good Su-jin much grief. He sent 
calls to the folks to give up their bad ways and be 
good, but they did not heed him, till a great plague 
came, which, the Jap-a-nese say, the gods would not 
check till the king made long fasts and prayed much 
to them, and had a great rite in view of "all the 
world" — that is Ja-pan, for in old times the Jap-a- 
nese thought their realm was the whole earth. When 
the plague did stop (which must have been when it 
could spread no more, or at a change in the weath-er), 
the folks were much struck with the signs of how 
great were their gods and their own sins ; and they 
then took heed of the Mi-ka-do's call, and sought to 
do the will of the gods with great zeal. By this 
means Su-jin soon did a great deal to raise the 
realm from the rough state in which he had found 
it to peace, good rule, and all the fine things for a 
realm which are meant by the one big word civ-il-i- 
za-tion. There were in the house of the Mi-ka-do a 
mir-ror, a sword, and a ball, which Jim-mu had put 
there with much care as the '* sa-cred em-blems " of 
his god-race, — that is, things which the Mi-ka-do 
and all the men of the land were to look on as the 



How the Mikado s Empire Became a Real Nation. 1 7 

type of what was most high to them — some-what as 
Ro-man Cath-o-hcs look on the cross. These Su-jin 
sent out of his house for fear it was not well for them 
to be so near him (for his bod-y was but of earth 
though his soul was of heav-en;) and, while he had 
a mir-ror, a sword, and a ball made just like them 
and put in a "place of rev-er-ence " made for them 
in his own house, the real em-blems were put in a 
small church built for them far off from the house of 
an-y man, where they could not be hurt in the least 
by aught that was not pure ; then he made his own 
girl-child a priest-ess to take care of them — and to 
this day these things are in the shrines of U-ji 
in I-se — where they were put in the year 4 a. d. 
They are still kept in the charge of a maid who 
is of the race of the Mi-ka-do and can not wed. 
The small church, or tem-ple, which the Mi-ka-do 
built for the cop-ies of the em-blems was the first of 
the shrines that have since been put up as a part of 
each roy-al house that has been raised in Ja-pan. 

Su-jin's zeal for the good of the realm came out in 
more than one way. He did as much for its trade, 
its growth in wealth and strength as a state, as for 
the true faith. He made a law that all the men and 
the wom-en of the realm should — each for a short 
time — leave their own work and give a share of 
their toil to the realm, the work of the men went for 



1 8 History of Japan. 

the troops while that of the wom-en was at their 
looms or in the field. This wise king did a great 
deal to put good new ways of life in the place of the 
old ones the men had learned from their sires of the 
half-wild tribes of A-si-a. To make a just plan for 
them to pay their tax he had the first lists made out 
of the folks in all parts of the land, which was the 
same scheme as that by which a cen-sus, as we call 
it, is made in our own land each ten years or so ; and 
he taught them, too, how to keep a count of time. 
For Su-jin to think this out for him-self shows that 
he was a man of a great mind. He had boats built, 
too ; and did all he could to try to make the folks 
work more and do more, to take more in their 
boat-loads when they set out with fish or the stuff 
that they made or raised in their fields to oth-er 
ports to change for things they could not raise. In 
this way they built up trade and their wealth grew 
year by year as time went on ; then he taught them 
to make more of their land than they had known 
how to ere this, so that he is now known as the fath- 
er of Jap-a-nese farm-ing. He made ca-nals him- 
self and sent forth word that his folks should dig 
them, too, so that the fields of rice need not want for 
wa-ter. This made the rice crops more large than 
they had been, but there were more boats to bear it 
to parts of the realm where it did not grow, and in 



How the Mikado s Empire Became a Real Natio7t. 



19 



this way the men of the north and south, east and 
west, came to deal with and to know each oth-er. 
This kept them so that they did not grow not to 
care for an-y part of the realm but just that where 
they dwelt, which does a realm great harm. You 




SHOPS AND WARE-HOUS-ES. 



can see by this that the rice trade of Ja-pan is 
an old one as well as a large one. There are 
vast fields of flat lands with huge tanks full of 
wa-ter to be let out on the field when the right time 
comes — for rice is grown as well as sown in wa- 
ter ; and the hill-sides, too, are some-times cut so as 



20 History of Japan. 

to form sta-ges like great flights of steps, and more 
than one swift stream is turned from its wild course 
to flow smooth and calm through a long ditch cut 
through the rice-fields of the hill-sides. 

There was naught, it seems, that this good Mi-ka-do 
did not think of for his realm. Home work, home 
trade, good laws, were not all that he left his folks. 
He made friends with Co-re-a, and let one of the 
o^reat chiefs of that realm of the West come a-cross 
the Sea of Ja-pan and live on his lands; and he 
learnt from his guest good things which he made 
use of in his realm. As there were yet in the North 
part of the isles some wild tribes of the Ai-no's or 
first men of the land, who still held out as foes of 
the Jap-a-nese, and with whom these good farm 
folks of Yu-ma-to were in a sort of line-war all the 
time, Su-jin made up his mind to put the whole 
realm in charge of troops to guard its bounds and 
to keep its men and their homes safe from the 
foe. The whole land was marked off in-to four 
parts, and each part was put in the charge of a chief 
man-at-arms, which the Jap-a-nese call a Sho-gun, 
and which we would call a gen-e-ral. This was the 
first stage of the Mi-ka-do's troop which grew 
great as years went on, and which came at last to 
claim a large class from the Jap-a-nese race. But 
at first the ranks were made up from the hands in the 



How the Mikado's Empire Became a Real Nation. 21 

field, the trades-men, and from all the folks, who left 
their work and went out to fight un-der the Mi-ka-do 
them-selves, when there was a call to war, and who 
took their way back home as soon as it was done. 

It was in the reign of the next king that store- 
hous-es were set up in the realm, and that some such 
plans as those for the troops of our own day were 
made to keep food and arms on hand so that the 
men could set out at an-y time to put down an out- 
break of their foes, or quell an-y such ill in their own 
lands — for some of the Mi-ka-do's own men were not 
yet much less rough and wild than those of the 
tribes from which they had sprung. In the far-off 
parts of the realm there had to be a strict watch kept 
on them all the time, or they would rise in host 
and break out in much the same sort of fights 
as we still have to dread from our red men of the 
■West. Some one who has dwelt in Ja-pan and 
knows its tale well, says that the Mi-ka-do's realm 
grew by war and fire and blood-shed, very much as 
our own race first got its hold on the land of the red 
men. The Jap-a-iiese were war-like men from the 
first, and it was in the camps and field near the lines 
of their wild foes that their race of men-at-arms 
grew and learnt to love war and to live for naught 
but that, and to know all its arts and have so much 
more skill in them than the sons of oth-er parts of the 



2 2 History of Japan. 

East. It was this ar-my plan, too, which did a great 
deal to bind all parts of the realm in-to one em-pire, 
so that it grew in strength as it grew in size, which 
it could not have done if it had been cut up in parts 
that spent their life in home-wars. 



CHAPTER III. 

LIFE AND WAYS IN ANCIENT JAPAN. 

The life and laws and ways of the Jap-a-nese 
have seen less change since the time of the first 
Mi-ka-dos than those of most lands, though in 
all the East there has been far less change, from 
age to age, than has come in the same length of time 
to Eu-rope and all lands of the West. In the first 
place, the Jap-a-nese got a good start ; they were 
far less rude as a race than most of the tribes in 
that part of A-si-a, and so have had less to learn 
than they. Two, at least, of their first Mi-ka-dos were 
great men, who thought out wise plans by which 
they built up a strong realm, whose many parts 
were bound in-to one great whole by firm ties. One 
man ruled them all ; he was the head of their state 
as well as their faith, and was a son of the ho-ly 



Life and Ways in Ancient Japan. 



23 



race which had been sent from on high to rule them 
and take care of their realmx. But, with all 
this, ii the Jap-a-nese had made friends with and 
learned the thoughts and plans of the men of oth-er 
lands, they could not have kept so firm in their own 
way, and it is due to that more than aught else that 
their realm was not split up and torn by bad home 
wars and that in the long lapse of years, when great 




SLEEP-ING ON BLOCK PIL-LOWS. 



ills fell on the lands west of Ja-pan and vast chang-es 
of all sorts shook near all the rest of the earth, this 
realm of sea-isles kept on in her own way and grew 
more large and more strong age by age, with not 
more than three or four such great chang-es as Rus- 
sia, France and Prus-sia had all the time in the 
course of near a score of cent-u-ries. 



24 History of Japan. 

Jim-mu had found these isles a realm most fair 
to see. In the East and North its moors lay in 
long tracts of grass and reeds and bam-boo cane, 
where wild beasts dwelt and gave the sports of the 
chase to the wild men of the soil. Its steep hills 
and its calm dells were grand and fair, and some- 
times set thick with trees and green with grass or 
grown with wild flow-ers. Its men dwelt in small 
huts that stood in groups; they had no tame beasts; 
their ways of life were rude and wild ; they could 
fish and hunt, but they did not know how to do 
much else. In the course of time they learned to 
till their ground, for the race of Jim-mu knew how 
to raise crops and work ores, which were found 
to lie in the earth of these isles. The men 
soon learned to dig for them and then to work them ; 
and their wives learned how to weave and to spin ; 
and then some of the men bought and sold the 
fruits of the soil and the goods that were made; and 
so trade grew, and with that all learned to put forth 
their strength to raise more and more each year, or 
to push on and make some thing more fine than 
had been yet tried ; and so arts grew and sci-ence, 
and ere long the folks who dwelt near the Mi-ka- 
do's court or in or near the large towns had quite 
left off their old rude ways and were like a new 
race. 



26 History of Japaji. 

Like all wild men, the first Jap-a-nese thought 
that an-y one who was so brave and so great that he 
could lead in wars and win in large fights must be 
a god ; and so when Jim-mu beat the tribes of the 
South and some of the strong Ai-nos, and then set 
up his realm in the midst of them and made him- 
self chief lord of the sea-girt isles, it was not hard 
for him to make the tribes whom he had o-ver-come 
think he had been sent from on high and that he 
had full rights to rule them. If he was a god, so 
were his sons and all the chil-dren of his line. 
From this grew the first Jap-a-nese faith, which is 
known as the Shin-to. It is yet one of the chief 
faiths of the land, and those who hold to it still 
think that the Mi-ka-do is the son of the great sun- 
god-dess, who is at the head of all that they pray to. 
But there is more than one god in Shin-to. 
Those who hold to it think that all their great 
men who have fought in all the wars of the realm 
are gods. They bow down and pray to their sires 
as well as their kings, to their wise men and all who 
have done great work of an-y kind for Ja-pan, while 
more high than all these they hold the sun or light 
— which they look on as a god-dess — and fire 
and most of the torc-es of na-ture, — that is, rain 
and wind and all those things with-out which all 
that now has life on the earth would die. Each 



Life and Ways hi Ancient Japa^i. 27 

fief, each town, all parts of the land, have their own 
saints or ka-mi, and the whole realm is now set 
thick with shrines, and there seems no end to the 
gods and half-gods of the Shin-to. But at first 
the folks did not have all these way-side shrines 
that now dot the whole land. The first men met 
on the hill-top, on the banks of the streams and 
in the woods to lay fruits, fish, and game on a rude 
shrine of stone or earth, and give them to their 
gods in thanks for what they had had or when they 
would pray for what they were in want of. They 
still have no i-dols, but they had priests in those 
days as now, who wore white robes, made them- 
selves clean in the bath, and took no food ere they 
laid these gifts of men on the shrines of the gods. 

The first law of this old faith is that those who 
hold to it must be clean and pure. The priests 
have to bathe a great deal and to put on clean 
clothes ere they go to pray or to their ho-ly work, 
and all who walk in it are bound to keep them- 
selves from all that is not thought to be pure and 
clean. 

At first none but the Mi-ka-do had a shrine to 
the sun-god-dess, but ere long a few were set up to 
her in the towns or where a few farm-folks dwelt in 
a group of huts, and at last there came to be a great 
ma-ny to her. Then there were tem-ples ; but it 



28 History of Japan. 

was a long time ere the way-side shrines that one 
now sees in all parts of the land were set up in the 
woods or on the roads through the hills or tracts of 
farm lands. 

Twice a year, in the Sixth and Twelfth months, 
the folks of the old times met on the banks of a 
stream and there had a great Shin-to rite. It was 
the time when all the realm could be made clean 
of its sins and its wrong ways, when men could 
bathe in the stream and pray and be pure. The 
odes that were made up to be sung to the gods at 
these rites were the first that are known to have been 
made in the Jap-a-nese tongue. The form of pray-er 
that they then had is still in use by those who hold 
the Shin-to faith. But this and the odes were not 
kept in writ-ing. The Jap-a-nese of that day did 
not know how to write in an-y way, not e-ven by 
signs. Men taught their sons what they knew, and 
so for a long, long time all the his-to-ry, laws, tales 
and odes or an-y sort of verse of the Jap-a-nese were 
kept in the minds of a few, who passed them from 
sire to son, till some one thought of a way to write 
them down. Most of the world has learnt to draw 
and paint and to make statues and has got most all 
of this kind of art from Greece, but the art of the 
Jap-a-nese is all their own. It was born in them, 
and is not like that of an-y oth-er folks in the world. 



Life and Ways in A7icieiit Japan. 



29 



From the first they have known how to do their 
work in met-als, and in chi-na, which is more fine 
than the men oi any oth-er land have made or can 
make ; but the world of the West had known the 
fine arts for a long time ere the Jap-a-nese seem to 
have thought that they could make cop-ies of men 




AN ART-IST AT WORK. 



and beasts in clay oY wood or that they could draw 
or paint scenes of their folks, their life and their land. 
When they did wake to this, it was in the reign of 
Su-jin or his son, and was near the time that Christ 
came to live on earth. There was a cus-tom in the 
land that when a lord or great man died, his wife 



30 History of Japan. 

and one or two serv-ants should die and be put in 
the grave with him. The son of Su-jin tried to put 
a stop to this hard rite and did check it, but not 
quite. In a fewyears af-ter he sent out word to have it 
done no more, the Em-press died, and the folks of 
the land would have felt that it was not at all right 
to put her in the grave a-lone, but one of the men of 
the court who had made some fig-ures of clay was 
a-ble to have these put in the place of the real 
bod-ies. The Mi-ka-do was glad to hail this new 
plan ; he would raise the man who made the fig-ures 
to a high place and gave him the name of Ha-ji, 
which means one who knows the art by which clay 
im-a-ges are made. That put an end to the law that 
one man should die to be put in the grave with some 
one else, and it was the birth of fine art in Ja-pan. 
But it was a long time ere the folks of that land did 
an-y more than rude work of this kind. There is no 
place in the world where men can do such fine w^ork 
asthe Jap-a-nese have long done m theiruseof met-als, 
in chi-na and lac-quer-ware and in the way they weave 
silks and make it up in clothes ; but for a long time 
they did not do much in the fine arts that are best 
known to the West. In time they learnt how to 
carve fig-ures as well as to form them out of clay ; 
and they draw men and beasts with a more free and 
true hand than the art-ists of Eu-rope have ; but they 



Life and Ways in Ancient Japan, 31 

have had to learn how to draw out-door scenes — 
so as to make them look right — in the last few 
years, and they did not know at all how to paint in 
oils. But they use their own col-ors with as much if 
not more skill than the best paint-ers of old times or 
late years. 

In the days of long a-go the first Jap-a-nese dwelt 
in small huts which they made for them-selves. To 
build them, they stuck the poles of young trees 
with the bark still on them straight up in the ground 
and a-cross them bound more poles with a sort of 
rope made of vines or a rush that grew wild in pools 
near by. This made the frame, on which they put 
walls made of mats of grass, of boughs or of rush, 
while on the bam-boo frame-work of the peak roof 
they put a thick thatch which was of grass. The 
floors were of hard earth while doors and win-dows 
were holes, o-ver which mats were some-times hung. 
They were most plain in all ways, and in that they 
were like the Mi-ka-do's own home, for though this 
had more size than the huts of the folks, it was in 
old times as now a plain house with naught in it for 
show. For a long time it was no more fine or grand 
than those of his lords, and but for its size and that 
it stood a bit more high, you could not have told it 
from a tem-ple or from the homes of most an-y of the 
high class folks of the Jap-a-nese realm. Since 



2,2 History of Japmi. 

it was the place where dwelt a man who was thought 
to be half a god, it was much like a tem-ple, and as 
is still the rule with the Shin-to, all that has an-y 
part with that faith has no need to make a show of 
wealth or pomp. So in his life, his home, his 
dress and all else the Mi-ka-do was most plain. The 
shrines of the Shin-to faith of to-day are built on the 
same plan as the huts of these first men of the realm, 
and the homes one now sees there are on the same 
plan, too, though they are built with more size and 
more taste and have some good chang-es. The 
dress of those old times was made of the skins of 
wild beasts, and a coarse stuff that they wove of 
straw, grass, bark, and the fi-ber of the palm-tree. 
For a long time the folks knew naught of the silks 
and the cot-ton goods that are now worn so much in 
Ja-pan. Their dress was scant and plain; some of 
the time they wore a long cloak, with a belt, with 
leg-gings and san-dals of straw. As that was a-bout 
all they had for a full suit, there were, of course, 
times when less than that was worn. Their chief 
work was to hunt and fish ; and their food was the 
flesh of deer or bears and most all the beasts that 
were wild in the woods, while they al-so had much 
fish and the roots of plants. It was a long time ere 
the faith of Bud-dha was brought in-to the land to 
teach them it was not right for them to eat the flesh 



Life and Ways hi Aficient Japan. 



-hi 



of beasts ; but when that time did come, they were 
taught to plant grain and use that for food. From 
the first, fish has been the chief food of the Jap- 
a-nese and that is why most of the folks have made 
their homes and their towns on the line of streams 
and near the sea. 

The good work that Su-jin be-gan when he led 




OR-NA-MENl S. 



his men to work their fields and raise all the fine 
crops they could, has been kept up in all the times 
since, and now, in the tracts where folks live, through 
all the length and breadth of those fair isles, there 
IS scarce an mch of ground that is good, or could be 
made so, that has not been put to the ver-y best use 



34 History of Japan. 

for crops. If you should go to Ja-pan, to the farm 
lands, you would see miles of hills and vales whose 
sides are made into stag-es, like tall pairs of broad 
stairs, for rice fields, you would see tracts of good, 
rich ground, with a vast net-work of tanks and wa-ter 
way spread through them, and broad tracts of green 
flat lands with not a fence on them, nor an-y beast, 
wild or tame, to harm them. In all this you would 
see what two thou-sand years of hard toil and great 
care has done to make the land do its ver-y best to 
bear rich fruits and great crops. 

Jim-mu and his sons did not mean to let an-y part 
of the realm he had won from the first men of the 
isles slip from their hands; so a plan was soon made, 
to hold it all in the sway of the "great lord." This 
plan was to mark off the land in sort of states or 
fiefs, each of which was put in the charge of a prince 
or chief, who was to take care that his folks did not 
break from the Mi-ka-do, and at the same time look 
out for their good in all the ways that the Mi-ka-do 
should think best. Some-times these head-men were 
lords of the Mi-ka-do's own tribe, and some-times 
they were chiefs of the tribes that Jim-mu had found 
in the land ; all of them were like small kings in 
their own fiefs ; they had their lands and their men ; 
and no one but the Mi-ka-do was o-ver them. To 
him they had to pay a tax, and to him they had to 



36 History of Japan. 

bow as their great lord. Some of the Ai-no chiefs 
did not quite hke to own the sway of the Mi-ka-do, 
and the his-to-ry of the first years of the Jap-a-nese 
em-pire is full of tales of how now one, now more, 
broke out in vain tri-als to throw off the yoke. The 
space of land be-tween Lake Bi-wa and the bays of 
O-za-ka and O-wa-ri was known as the Ki-na-i, or 
Five Home States, and were the Mi-ka-do's own 
fiefs in his sole rule. The folks of these lands were 
bound to him by firm, strong ties; but in Shi-ko-ku 
and Ki-ush-i-u, of the South Isles, and the tribes 
that dwelt in the far West, North and East, were 
not yet quite put down. These fiefs were held by 
their own chiefs, who were on good terms with the 
Mi-ka-do, and paid court to him as their ''Su-ze- 
rain," or head chief. When they got in feuds with 
each oth-er they would a-gree to take the case to 
him, and bide by what he said ; for he was so strong 
at arms, and his realm took up so much of the best 
part of the isles that they would have had to look 
on him as their grand chief an-y way, but more than 
that, they all felt that he had come from heav-en ; 
and so there was no one a-bove him to whom they 
could go. So he held his rank, and when word 
came from him the tribes would hear and heed his 
voice, though they might be in the midst of one of 
their worst feuds. 



CHAPTER IV. 

TALES OF EARLY WARS. 

When Su-jin came to name the next em-per-or, 
the one who should take his place at his death, he 
found it hard to say which of his two sons he would 
choose. His love for both of them was the same, and 
he could not make up his mind to be more good to 
one than to the oth-er. At last he thought of a plan 
by which he could find out which of them would 
make the best em-per-or ; and one day he told them 
that they should come to him the next day and tell 
him what they dreamt that night. So when they 
had been through their bath and put on all clean 
night clothes, they laid down to sleep and to dream 
the dreams that would fix their fate. The next 
day they went to their great and good sire, and 
the first son said, he dreamt that he went up a 
high mount, and when he got to the top he stood, 
so he saw far off to the East, and that he cut with 
his sword and thrust with his spear eight times. 
Then the sire would hear what Su-i-nin, his young-er 
son, had dreamt. He too had gone up the high 



38 History of Japan. 

mount, but he had stretched cords and snares on all 
sides of him, and tried to catch the birds that ate 
the grain. Then the em-per-or thought what these 
dreams could mean, and at last he said to his first 
son, that since he had looked but one way he would 
go to the East and be the chief of that part of the 
realm ; but Su-i-nin looked round him on all sides, 
and he should be chief of all. ''You, my son, will 
be my heir," he said. So it w^as : the first son came 
to be the chief of the East and a great man at arms, 
while his broth-er took the throne, kept up the good 
work of his sire, and lived to reign in peace for 
near a hun-dred years. Ere he died, Christ was 
born in the West, and it was in the year 70, a. d., 
that he left his rule in the hands of Ke-i-ko, whose 
reign was made great by the deeds of his son. 

This brave youth, Ya-ma-to-Da-ke, the son of the 
twelfth em-per-or of Ja-pan, was fine to look at, as 
well as bold to fight, and his quick wit took him 
where his strong sword could not. The tales that 
are told of him, which most of the Jap-a-nese of this 
day hold to be true, are quaint and old, and show 
us more of the strange forms of the Jap-a-nese faith 
than of real facts in their his-to-ry ; but we are most 
sure that such a prince as Ya-ma-to-Da-ke did once 
dwell in the sea-girt realm, and that he did fight 
great wars in the isles of the South and East, and 



Tales of Early Wars. 



39 



bring large tribes of the Ai-nos to own his father's 
sway. 

It is said that he was brave and fond of war while 
he was yet a boy, and that in his youth he led a large 
force to put down an out-break of the rude folks that 
dwelt in the isle of Ki-ush-i-u. When he got there 
he found that the foes were 
in camp, and his next wish 
was to find their chief. So 
he made him-self look like 
a girl, who would dance for 
the chief, for he was fair 
and full of grace ; and in 
that guise he went to 
guard of the camp, 
who thought so fair 
and sweet a girl 
would please the 
chief, and took the 
young prince to his 
lord at once. The chief did like the girl, and drew 
her to his own tent, where he soon found that his 
guest had come for a feat that was much more stern 
than a dance, for the brave youth threw off his 
guise and laid hold of the chief, and took his 
life. This put an end to the strife in Ki-ush-i-u, 
and gave the prince the name of Ya-ma-to-Da-ke, 




EM-PER-OR IN AN-CIENT TIMES. 



40 History of Japan. 

which means war-Hke. It was more than ten years 
ere he set out on his next great war. That was in 
the year iio, a. d., when the tribes in the East 
part of Ja-pan broke out in wrath for the Mi-ka-do 
and his men-at-arms. The prince at the head of his 
troops went to put them down. 

He gave word for his men to halt when they got 
to I-se, and there he went to the shrine of the Sun- 
god-dess where the sym-bols were kept (and are still), 
and while he left his own sword at the foot of the pine 
tree (all the shrines have a pine tree near them), he 
bore off that of the shrine which the good priest-ess 
gave him to fight his ho-ly war. With this to aid him 
in his cause, he led the way on to the wilds of Su-ra-ga 
to fight the rough Ai-nos. But, when they found he 
was near, they fled from the plains to the woods and 
the safe spots in the hills, for the Ai-nos fought 
much as our red-men do. They would not come to 
a fray in the field where both sides could meet on 
the same ground, but they would hide and, with 
trees or thick brush, or some great rocks in front of 
them, they would shoot darts at their foes while they 
kept them-selves out of sight. There was no trick 
they were so fond of as to make their foes get lost 
in the thick woods, where they were so much at 
home. They would hide them-selves in the coat of 
some wild beast^ and thus act as spies and scouts 



Tales of Early Wars. 41 

while they made their guise cheat their foes and 
serve to trap them. Then, too, they would creep by 
stealth to the camp of the foe and set fire to the 
tents. At last, when they had drawn Ya-ma-to- 
Da-ke up in their woods and high haunts in the 
hills, they set fire to the growth of brush that stood 
thick on the ground, and it was joy to them to see 
how the wind drove the flames on and on to the 
camp of the Jap-a-nese troops. But, the tale says, 
when they had come so near that the prince thought 
his force would all be lost, the Sun-god-dess came 
to him, and he cut the grass round him with his ho-ly 
sword; and so great was its might that the flames 
swept on no more, but as if they had had a check, 
they stood still, and then ran back to where the 
bands of Ai-nos were hid, and burnt all those that 
did not at once run off and leave the land to the 
prince. Ya-ma-to-Da-ke gave thanks to the gods 
for this, and from that time the ho-ly sword no more 
bore the old name of '*Cloud-clus-ter," which it had 
had since the days of Jim-mu ; the prince gave it a 
new name, the ''Grass-mow-er." 

When he had made his gifts to the gods, he set 
out to push his way far through the lands of the 
Ai-nos and to add the great plain of the East, now 
known as the Ku-an-to, to the Mi-ka-do's realm. 
First he had to cross the Ha-ko-ne Mount-ains, and 



42 History of Japan. 

then he went on through the plain till he got to the 
Bay of Yed-do. He thought, as this was a strait 
of no great width, that he could take his troops 
with ease to the land be-yond, whose hills he could 
see so plain from the shore where he stood. But 
the brave prince did not know what winds and 
tides surge through the straits in that part of the 
bay, and with all his hosts he soon set out on a trip 
that was one of great fear and grief ere it came to 
an end. A storm came up, the seas rose high, and 
the poor boats were used so ill that the folks 
thought they would be lost. The prince was in a 
great fright ; he thought that the sea-god did not 
like some-thing he had said, and that he had sent 
this storm to smite him. If that were so, there was 
but one way to check the storm : that was to make 
some gift to the god, and so put an end to his 
wrath. It had to be some great gift too, some man 
or wom-an, and it was hard to choose whom it should 
be. But the prince did not have to make the 
choice. His fair wife, Ta-chi-ba-na Hi-me, said 
she would give her-self to the sea-god for the sake 
of the rest, and when she had said good-by to the 
prince, she left him in deep grief, and with one 
leap from their boat she was lost in the mad waves. 
The sea drove the boat on for a time, but soon 
the storm died down, the sky grew clear, the bay 



Tales of Early Wars. 



43 



calm, and the boat made for the shore. The new 

land to which Ya-ma-to - Da-ke had come was 

Kad-zu-sa, and he soon made him-self lord of the 

tribes he found there. In the bounds of the great 

town of To-ki-o, now at the head of this land, the 

site is still shown where the bold prince found his 

wife's comb, which was made of some wood of sweet 

scent, and which had 

lain on the top of the 

waves till they bore it 

to the shore. He built 

a shrine on the spot 

where he found it, and 

left the comb in it as a 

gift to the gods ; and 

on that spot a Shin-to 

shrine still stands, where 

the men who fish and 

live on the bay go to 

pray to the souls of the 

prince and his fair wife who gave her life for the 

boat -load that brought this land to own the 

Mi-ka-do's rule. 

When this shrine was built and when he had the 
tribes well in hand, he set out to add more lands 
and more folks to the em-pire. He went to the 
north, through Shi-mo-sa, and with his hosts with 



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SIGN AL-PHA-BET. 



44 History of Japan. 

him, kept on up the coast till he got to what the 
Jap-a-nese held to be the bounds of their realm. If 
you find the 38th par-al-lel on your maps, you will 
know as near as an-y one does where this was. In 
the lands on the north side of this line dwelt wild 
Ai-no tribes who were proud of their race, of their 
right to their lands, and of their might and free 
state. When they heard that a great prince was 
come from Ja-pan to put them down, they brought 
a vast host to meet him and show him that he must 
fight hard ere he did with them as with the men of 
Kad-zu-sa. Their first chiefs at the head of the 
hosts were on the shore in wait for the prince when 
his fleet came in view. It was a sight they had not 
seen nor dreamt of — this crowd of boats, with their 
full sails that bore for the shore by some strange 
force that they could not see. " From the gods ! " 
they cried, ''we shall die if we draw bow on them." 
And so when Ya-ma-to-Da-ke set foot on the strand, 
the proud fierce chiefs fell down in awe, and with 
ease he brought all the tribes to own his lord, the 
Mi-ka-do, as their great chief. 

He was now glad to go back to his sire and his 
friends, but he did not take the most quick way to 
get to them, for it was his wish to learn as much as 
he could of this new land of the East. The tale 
which the Jap-a-nese tell of this long home-ward 







IN-TE-RI-OR OF THE 1 EM-PLE 



46 History of Japan. 

trip is full of strange things. They tell how he 
went through some of the lands he had won on his 
way up ; how, while he took rest at Ka-i, he made 
the first dis-tich or po-em, of thir-ty-one syl-la-bles, 
which is much used now-a-days. They tell how he 
sent one of his chiefs from here to make peace in the 
North-west, while he went on to Shi-na-no, a great 
stretch of high land, round which range some of the 
most high peaks and chains of mount-ains in all 
Ja-pan. He took his men through the pass of 
Us-u-i To-ge, which has a wide fame with all who 
have been to these isles, and while he stood on 
some high point from which he could see the view 
of plain and hills and sea that spread out at his feet 
— as fair a one as there is in Ja-pan — he thought of 
his lost wife, and in soft, low tones he said, *' Ad- 
zu-ma ! Ad-zu-ma ! " which means, '' My wife ! My 
wife ! " and to this day Ad-zu-ma is the name that 
po-ets give to the plains of Yed-do. 

It was a task such as had not been tried ere this, 
to cross the great hills of Shi-na-no. There were 
no paths, and no one but the bold prince would 
have thought he could pick out a way through those 
steep, bright, smooth, la-va beds, swift streams and 
dense fogs. The folks thought that the place was 
full of gods, and each loose stone by which they 
lost their hold on a ledge of rock, each fog or thick 



Tales of Early Wars. 47 

cloud that fell on them, and all the bad smells from 

the gas of the earth or the peaks that sent forth fire 

were signs of the 

wrath of some 

ofod. Once when 

a white deer came 

up to Ya-ma-to- 

Da-ke, it was said 

that this was the 

bad god of the 

hills come to vex 

him. He threw 

some wild gar-lie 

in its eyes, from 

which it died. 

Then fog and 

mist spread in 

the path of his 

host, so they 

would have met 

their death there 

if it had not been 

that a good god, 

in the form of a 

white dog, led them to the plains of Mi-no. Then 

when they got near some foul gas, it was thought 

that the soul of the white deer had come on them, 













A TEM-PLE. 



48 History of Japan. 

SO that they were too weak to stand, which naught 
but the wild gar-Hc that the men ate could drive off. 
When they had gone through the plains of Mi-no 
and come to the tall mount of I-bu-ki Ka-ma, which 
rears its great flat head far through the clouds, Ya- 
ma-to-Da-ke made up his mind to break the strength 
of the bad gods who dwelt on this mount, and while 
he left his ho-ly sword, Grass-mow-er, at its foot, he 
set out ; but the god made it-self a snake and tried 
to bar the way. The prince, in one leap, was past 
it ; but the sky grew dark at once, and he lost his 
path, grew faint and fell. • He saw a spring near 
by, though ; and when he had had a drink he could 
hold up his head. He had his men take him to 
Ot-su in I-se, where he found at the foot of a pine 
tree the sword he had laid off when he went to put 
down the god. He was still weak, but he took 
great care to make gifts to the god-dess at I-se, to 
tell all he had seen and done in the three years he 
had been gone, and to pray and give thanks that 
he had come through it all with his life. Then he 
sent word to his sire of what he had done, told him 
that he was nigh to death and would like to see 
him ; but he died ere this could be. His corpse 
was laid at No-bo-no in I-se. The tale says that 
a white bird flew up from his tomb, in which 
there was naught left but the wreath and grave robes 



Japan s First Foreign Congest. 49 

of the brave prince. The bird, it is said, flew to 
the Plain of the Ko-lo Play- e- res in Ya-ma-to, 
which from that time has been known as Mi-sa-za-ka 
Shi-ra-to-ri, or Im-pe-ri-al Tomb of the White Bird. 
That was in the year 113 a. d. Ya-ma-to was then 
thir-ty-six years old, and since that time shrines 
have been set up to him in most all parts of Ja-pan, 
and to this day folks pray to him as a god. 



CHAPTER V. 

japan's first foreign conquest. 

The Mi-ka-do Se-i-mu took the place of old Ke-i-ko, 
whose son Ya-ma-to-Da-ke had been dead most a 
score of years, ere his soul went to join that of the 
brave prince. When Se-i-mu's reign of six-ty years 
was done, Chi-na-i took his place, and he was the 
spouse of the great Em-press Jin-gu Ko-go, who led 
the most grand war told of in the tales of Ja-pan 
since the first great feat of Jim-mu. 

Jin-gu was fair to look at, good, quick of mind, 
strong and brave. She paid great heed to the gods, 
and they, the Jap-a-nese would tell you, chose her 
out of all the eood folks of the realm to be the one 



50 History of Japan. 

who should hear their will and know their plans for 
the good of the realm. They told her what great 
things the Jap-a-nese might do, and she had the 
faith to go where they said, and a bold, brave heart 
that knew no fear on sea or land, in peace or war. 

In the first year of her lord's reign there was an 
out-break of some of the tribes in Ku-ma-so, a part 
of Ki-u-shi-u, and Chi-u-ai at the head of his troops 
went down to make peace, while his wife and some 
of his folks came on in ships. Jin-gu's heart was 
full of hope that they might win in this war, and by 
it join all the Ku-ma-so folks to their throne. She 
went to pray on one of the isles of the In-land Sea, 
and while at her shrine one of the gods spoke to her 
and said, ''Why do you wish so much to gain sway in 
Ku-ma-so ? That is but a poor place, not worth the 
cost of this great war you would make. But there 
is a rich land, sweet and fair, bright with gold and 
ores, and gems of all sorts that have much worth ; 
it lies in Shi-ra-ki" (that is Co-re-a), ''and if you pray 
and make gifts to me, and keep your thoughts on 
me, I will lead you to that land and will give it in-to 
your hands, yet cause you to shed no blood ; and I 
will give you sway in Ku-ma-so as well." Jin-gu 
told this to her spouse, but he did not share her 
faith that it was words come to them from the gods. 
He went up to the top of a great hill, from which he 



Japans First Foreign Conqitest. 



51 



could see far to the West ; but as all sea and no land 

-met his view he said, " I see no new lands ; if there 

is not some in the sky, then you tell me what is not 

true. My sires paid their court 

to all the gods ; is there an-y to 

whom they did not pray and 

make gilts?" The gods, through 

Jin-gu, sent word that if the 

Mi-ka-do had doubts, and 

thought that what they said was 

not true, then they would not aid 

Chi-u-ai ; but his good wife 

should go to the new land and 

her-self win all its wealth. But 

Chi-u-ai went on in his war with 

the folks of Ku-ma-so, and they 

beat him. Then, while in camp, 

he fell sick and died. But the 

troops were not told of his death, 

and the brave Jin-gu, with the 

Mi-ka-do's chief man of state, 

went on with the strife till they 

won the field. Then the brave 

em-press thought of the realm of 

the West which the gods had told her of; and when 

she had tried some tests to see if her course were right, 

and found that the gods were still with her, she set out 




TAT-IOOED MAN. 



52 History of Japan. 

to cross that great stretch of strange sea, which is so 
broad that she could find no trace of the land that 
bounds it on the West. 1 1 was a great task to make up 
all the troop and to build all the ships she would need. 
But she had no fear of great tasks. She sought the 
aid of her chief men-at-arms, whom "she said she 
would lead, in the guise of a man. If her scheme 
should fail she would take all the blame ; but if it 
did not, the praise should be theirs. The men swore 
that they would stand by her and go where she led, 
to the end. They set to work ; troops were brought 
in from all parts of the realm, and at last, when 
Jin-gu had gone through her last rites to the gods, 
and had made her last charge to her men as to how 
they should act in the new land, and to the new 
folks they were to meet, they set out with this word 
from the god, who had led her to take this bold step: 
"The Spir-it of Peace will at all times guide you 
and take care of your life. The Spir-it of War will 
go on in front of you and lead your ships." The 
brave em-press, as well as her sea-men, did not know 
just where Co-re-a lies ; they had no chart and no 
com-pass, but with the sun, stars and the flights of 
birds as the guides meant by the gods, and with 
winds, waves and tides right to aid them, they made 
a quick and safe trip, and brought their ships to beach 
in the south part of Co-re-a. It was a fine, bright 



Japans First Foreign Conquest. 



53 



day, and the sun shone on the arms of the host, as 
rank on rank they set foot on the shore, till they 
made such a grand show that the Co-re-ans were 
struck with fear and awe. The king of this part of 
the realm, who had been told that a strange fleet 
from the East was in sio^ht, felt the same as his folks, 




A WREST-LING CIR-CUS. 



and cried out : ''We did not know that there was a 
land out-side of ours. Have our gods left us ? " It 
seems as if he did not think he could drive the Jap- 
a-nese out, but at once sent his men to meet them 
with a white flag borne on high, to show that they 
meant peace. The two bands met on good terms, 



54 History of Japan. 

and Jin-gu had been but a short time in this strange 
land when its folks gave them-selves and their wealth 
up to her, and made an oath that they would own 
the head of Ja-pan as their great chief, that they 
would send some of their wealth to this chief from 
time to time, and some of their best men, too, that 
the Jap-a-nese might be sure that they still held to 
their oath and have no cause to come with their 
troops on an-y more such trips as this one. Streams 
might flow back-ward, they said, or the small stones 
in their beds leap up to the stars, yet they would not 
break their oath. So Jin-gu said she would not make 
war, and the king had four-score of the ships well 
stored with gold and silks, and wealth of all kinds ; 
and four-score men of high rank were put on board 
as his pledge of good faith. With these Jin-gu and 
her vast host went back to Ja-pan. They had been 
gone but two months, and in that time had done the 
most grand thing in all their his-to-r}^ — a feat more 
great than the war of Jim-mu, for with all that she 
had done no blood had been shed and no life lost. 
It was the first time the Jap-a-nese had gone to a 
strange land to fight, and to this day they take great 
pride in it, and tell how they first made ''the arms 
of Ja-pan shine be-yond the seas." 

When Jin-gu got home she had a son whom the 
Jap-a-nese look on as the god of war. Then the 



56 Histoiy of Japan. , 

death of Chi-u-ai was made known, and in due form 
the em-press went through the rites of the dead ere 
she made her way back to her court. This was in 
the eight hun-dred and six-ty- third year of the 
Jap-a-nese em-pire, or as we count the years 203 a. d. 
Jin-gu kept the throne for near three score and ten 
years more. It was a reign in which much new 
thought and new ways of hfe came to the realm from 
the Co-re-ans, who got their ways from the Chi-nese, 
but of whom the Jap-a-nese had not heard ere this. 
Then, too, Jin-gu made a great change in the plan 
on which the em-pire was laid out. The Mi-ka-do 
who held the throne ere Chi-u-ai's time, had cut it 
up a-new from the old, rough plan of the fiefs that 
were held by the sho-guns, which Su-jin laid out in 
the year 25 a. d. ; but now Jin-gu made a new plan, 
like that in Co-re-a, with five home states, in which 
was the chief town and the seat of the court, and 
sev-en more states, or do as the Jap-a-nese call them, 
whose names show which way they lie from the seat 
of the em-pire. This form, for the most part, has 
been kept till now, though in those days the folks 
knew much less of the size and shape of the isles 
that make up their realm, than they do now. All 
parts were known by these do names, and there were 
not, as we might think, names tor each of the isles 
by it-self. In fact, it was not till a long time that 



Japan s First Foreign Conquest. 



57 



they came to know that the main isle, Hou-do, was 
an isle. If you should hear folks call this main isle 
Nip-pon, you may be sure that they do not know 
the Jap-a-nese well, for to them that name stands 
for the whole land. 

Jin-gu, and her son, O-jin, are now great gods in 




the Shin-to. There are a host of shrines to them 
in all parts of the realm, and men of arms and men 
of the sea pray to O-jin as the god of war, like Mars 
was to the Greeks in days of old; and boys are 
taught to look to Jin-gu and to think of her life and 
brave deeds, as if she were a man in whose steps 



^8 History of Japan. 

they must try to tread. She is put with the great 
men, not the wom-en, when on the 5th of May each 
year the pic-tufes, dolls and fig-ures of the house 
are brought out and the youths are told tales of those 
sires who have done grand things for the ho-ly 
realm of Dai (great) Nip-pon, and are taught that 
they must try to be as great and good as their 
sires. 

It was a tide of new life that this great queen 
brought to her realm w^hen she made Co-re-ans take 
an oath to send her of their wealth and their men 
as a pledge of their faith to her. For five cent-u- 
ries— from the 3d to the 8th — this new stream of 
life bore on its flood a great load from A-si-a to 
Ja-pan of all those things which make folks more 
fine and less rude, and give them a taste for what 
things are good, and pure and high, in place of wild 
ways, strife and war — that is, it gave the Jap-a-nese 
a love for books and taught them how to write. It 
gave them a new faith, which did much to change 
and raise the Shin-to, but did not wipe it out. It 
taught them how to think and gave them new views 
of life. It told them of laws, of how to heal the 
sick, of more of sci-ence, and gave them much 
new lio^ht on art. Folks from the West came to 
live in the land, who could teach the Jap-a-nese how 
to use their hands as well as their minds in ways 



Japans First Foreign Conquest. 59 

they knew naught of ere this. Though this great 
change took its start in Jin-gu's time, there are few 
tales told of who came to Ja-pan from Co-re-a in her 
reign. In her son's day we read of some three hun- 
dred tail-ors who came, and most three hun-dred 
fine steeds that were sent as a gift from the king; 
and it was then, too, that a man who had read 
books a great deal, and was well learnt, came to 
dwell at the Court for a while and taught the Mi-ka- 
do's son how to write. Quite a long time went by, 
though, ere much use was made of this new art by 
the Jap-a-nese, and it was not till 403 a. d., that 
there was an-y one kept at court to make note of 
what took place in the realm. Near this time some 
mul-ber-ry trees were brought from the West and 
set out, and the care of silk-worms came to be 
known here as in Chi-na and Co-re-a. The two 
realms seem to have been on the best of terms, for 
some of the Co-re-ans who went there must have 
gone of their own will. There were great bands of 
work-men, trades-men and plain folks of all crafts 
who went from Co-re-a to make them-selves at home 
in the strange isles of the East. Ja-pan must have 
thought a great deal of her new realm, too, for she 
used it well, and once when the food gave out there 
the Mi-ka-do sent vast loads of grain to the poor 
folks. In the year 552 there came to the sea-girt em- 



6o History of Japan. 

pire as friends some men from the Court of Chi-na, 
as well as quite a band of Co-re-ans, some of whom 
had great gifts in sci-ence and art, and some who 
were priests of Bud-dha. This was the great faith 
of the lands west of Ja-pan, and was not at all like 
the rude Shin-to. It soon spread till it got a strong 
hold on the folks, rich as well as poor, and for 
years it has been the chief faith of most of the Jap- 
a-nese, as it is of near one-third of all the folks on 
the globe. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOW JAPAN FELL UNDER MILITARY RULE. 

For near six hun-dred years from the time of 
Jin-gu not much is known of what took place in this 
realm of the far East. There is a long list of the 
Mi-ka-dos who held the throne, with now and then 
a few notes of what they did with Co-re-a and 
Chi-na. But in the course of that long time we 
know that the faith of Bud-dha and some of the 
Chi-nese modes of rule got firm root in the land. 
Some one has said that these brought to an end the 
Gold-en Age of the Mi-ka-dos' sway. Ere long the 



How Japan Fell Under Militai^y Rule. 



6r 



Em-per-or and his chief man of state took the new 
faith and a vast change was wrought in the realm. 
For one thing, it broke up the long reigns that had 
been one great cause of the strength of the throne, 
and in more ways than one it made the Mi-ka-do 




A NOBLE SEN-TENCED TO THE HA-RI KA-RI. 



lose part of his hold on the folks, and led to a new 
sort of rule. In the eighth cent-u-ry the court did 
a great deal to spread this faith. The men whose 
place it was to wait on the Mi-ka-do were full of 



62 History of Japan. 

zeal to do all that the creed calls for and to be well 
learnt in the ho-ly books of In-di-a. Word was sent 
out that two great shrines and a tall church — which 
is known as a pa-go-da — sev-en sto-ries high, should 
be built in each fief of the realm. The ranks of the 
priests grew to great size, and there were scores of 
homes built for those men who had a wish to be 
monks and for the rest of their lives to read the 
Bud-dhist books and live for naught but their faith. 
The em-per-ors, and the em-press-es, too, thought 
much of how they might spread this new faith 
through their whole realm, and it soon came 
to be the way with the Mi-ka-dos to leave the 
throne when they had held it for a few years 
and turn monks. They would shave their 
heads, as a sign that they were to have no more to 
do with the world, and would take the name of 
Ho-o, which means the Em-per-or-Monk of Bud-dha. 
The Mi-ka-do who took the place of O-jin had a 
long reign, but that of the next one was short ; and 
so it went on for a long time. When a mi-ka-do 
had held the throne for a year or so, he would leave 
it to his son, who might be but a year or two old, 
and this boy would do the same, so that the 
realm was in the hands of the chief monks, 
the men of state, of the court, and not in the 
sway of the throne at all. Of course this was 



How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 63 

bad for the rule and for the folks who could not 
look up to their Mi-ka-do as those of old had done 
to the brave men-at-arms and the kings of firm will 
and wise minds, strong frames and good health, 
who had led their troops in great wars, and had had 
the good and the growth of all parts of their realm 
at heart. But while the race on the throne grew 
weak, the class that bore arjns (which, as we know, 
was made to have a good deal of sway in the days 
of the first mi-ka-dos) grew more strong, and at last 
they made a great change in the form of rule in the 
Jap-a-nese Em-pire. 

From the time that Jin-gu's war had let the flood 
of life come in from the West, more than one change 
had crept in, which in a still way brought forth a 
new state of things in the whole land, in the course 
of time. But the two things that did more than 
aught else to mold the life of the Jap-a-nese in-to 
what the rest of the world found it less than a score 
of years a-go were Bud-dhism and Feu-dal-ism. The 
new faith, which came first, led a large part of the 
folks to give up their old gods, or look at them in a 
new light ; to change in part their aims in life, their 
ways, and e-ven their food ; and more than this, its 
priests brought to the realm the germs of new arts 
and taught the folks to read, write and speak th-e 
tonorue of Chi-na, and made known to them not a 



64 History of Japan. 

few new kinds of work, which the quick minds of 
the Jap-a-nese soon made their own, and wrought 
out with such skill as is seen in no place else. The 
work of Bud-dhism was to mold the minds and 
ways of the folks ; that of Feu-dal-ism was to put 
the realm in the rule of the Sho-guns and to cu.t it 
up in-to fiefs, in each of which a Dai-mi-o or chief 
held sway like a king. His life was spent to gain 
lands and win in wars, his home was a vast fort, 
in the chief town of the fief, with stout walls, through 
which no strange man could go till he had shown 
he had a right to, and his house-hold was like a 
small town of men-at-arms, who kept guard for their 
lord in peace and fought for him in war. 

In this the Mid-die A-ges of Ja-pan were like 
those of Eu-rope, in both of which Feu-dal-ism rose 
at the same time, though when it came to an end in 
the fif-teenth cent-u-ry in Eu-rope, it was just on 
the rise to its height in Ja-pan, where it was brought 
to a more high state than in an-y land of the 
East. 

For a long time ere this class rose to an-y great 
strength, the realm was for the most part in the 
hands of some lords of high rank, who did not bear 
arms. From them the knights of the field made up 
their minds to get the reins of rule. These were 
the Ku-ge or court lords of the proud Fu-ji-wa-ra 



66 History of Japan. 

stock, the first great race in Ja-pan, which was not oi 
the Mi-ka-do's house. They said they came from 
Am-e, who served the grand-sire of J im-mu. The first 
great lord of this house, by some means, rose with 
the folks at Court till he came to be Ku-am-ba-ku, 
or Re-gent, for one of the young mi-ka-dos ; and to 
take this post, which was the most high that an-y 
sub-ject could hold, came to be the right of his race.. 
From this house sprung the chief lords of the realm. 
At first they held chief rank in arms as well as at 
Court, but ere long they grew so fond of ease that 
they left the fame and spoils of war to be won by 
those who would fight for them, while they gave 
them-selves up to life at Court, where they had full 
sway and rank next to the Mi-ka-do's own house. 
They made them-selves a bar to cut the Mi-ka-do 
off from the mass of his folks. As time went on the 
gulf grew to be still more wide, till at last he was 
like a man that did not dwell in the same realm 
with them at all. He was not seen by an-y one but 
his wife, the folks of his own house, and a few of 
his most high men of state. He sat on a throne of 
mats, with a screen in front of him, and his feet did 
not touch the earth at an-y time, and when he rode 
out he was shut in from the view of the folks of the 
street. Thus, while his sway with the folks grew 
weak, that of the Fu-ji-wa-ra grew strong, till at last 



How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 67 

these lords got a great deal of the rule of the realm 
in their own hands. They put them-selves in the chief 
posts of trust and strength, and ere long did with 
the Em-pire as they chose, and made use of the 
young mi-ka-dos, who were mere boys, as tools to 
do their will. 

The throne lost its rights so far that when a mi- 
ka-do had a wish to have an-y real sway in his realm, 
he would find he could gain it more as a monk 
than as the em-per-or on the throne. But for the 
most part the rule was in the hands of this proud 
race, till the Tai-ra took it from them by might at 
arms. For a thou-sand years, from the time of the 
brave Queen Jin-ju, till the great home war of the 
twelfth cent-u-ry — the worst in all her his-to-ry — the 
tale of Ja-pan is made up less of the deeds ol the mi- 
ka-dos or of the realm in his hands, than of the 
feuds and fights of these lords and their kins-men, 
who were high born, rich, and some of them of grand 
and brave deeds ; for the class that bore the arms of 
the Em-pire and fought her wars did not long let the 
Ku-ori class have the best of thino^s at home. So 
much the more could they fight their own wars. 

The em-per-ors them-selves were not all good 
men. One whose name was Bu-ret-su, and who 
had quite a long reign for those times in the last of 
the fifth cent-u-ry, and the first of the next, is said 



68 History of Japan. 

to have been hard and fond of coarse sports, hke 
the Ro-man em-per-or Ne-ro. He would make his 
folks go up trees that he might fire on them and'kill 
them, and he thought it great sport to catch folks 
and kill them when they did not know he was near. 
In the time of Bi-dat-su, who took the throne near 
four-score years af-ter the time of the Jap-a-nese 
Ne-ro, quite a bad war was led on the Bud-dhists 
by a man whose name was Mo-ri-a. He tore down 
the ho-ly things from their shrines, and burnt not a 
few of the. shrines ; but the strife was put down in 
the reign of the next mi-ka-do, and Mo-ri-a was 
slain. But peace was still far off, for the ranks of 
the men-at-arms were large and strong in these days, 
and war was their joy as well as their work in life. 
If they did not have it at home they made it some- 
where else. In the reign of Ten-shi, near a hun- 
dred years from Mo-ri-a's war, a great host in a large 
fleet went to Co-re-a, where they made the king 
leave his throne and the folks own the Mi-ka-do of 
Ja-pan as their chief. But they did not meet with 
as good luck as this, when — in the same reign — they 
went to Chi-na. Thus the tale of the Realm of the 
Isles goes on till the great war of the twelfth cent- 
ur-y, when the Bu-ke (or knights at arms) of the house 
of He or Tai-ra, and the house of Gen or Min- 
a-mo-to, fell out in a great strife and brought on the 



How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 



69 



worst home-war Ja-pan has known. It was the 

Ta-i-ra clan, led by Ki-o-mo-ri, who won in this war, 

and he was the first sho-gun, or gen-er-al, as we 

would say, who got 

the might of the 

throne out of the 

hands of the Mi-ka- 

do — or his Re-gent 

of Fu-ji-wa-ra blood 

— and made that 

great change in the 

form of rule by 

which ere long the 

em-per-or came to 

stand at the head 

of the realm in 

naught but name, 

and as the chief of 

all priests and monks |-| 

in the faith, while 

some chief-at-arms, 

in the post of Great 

Sho-gun, was at the 

head of the state as 

well as of all the troops, and had charge of the realm 

m peace as much as in war. 

The ofreat strife and the chanoe of rule that marks 




RE-CEP-TION DRESS. 



JO History of Japan. 

this time as one of much note in the past of Ja-pan, 
came to pass in this way. As the Mi-ka-do's sway 
had grown weak and the Hu-ge and the Bu-ke had 
grown more strong, each came to have a great deal 
of ill-will for the oth-er, for each had a wish to be 
first in the realm and to get the Mi-ka-do in its own 
hands. And this ill-will grew and grew till at last 
it broke out in a great feud and threw all the realm 
in-to dread and strife. As long as the Gen and 
Ta-i-ra kept to war, the Fu-ji-wa-ra had naught to 
dread from them, and saw them grow great in their 
fame with no fear ; but there were times of peace 
now and then when the bold, brave gen-er-als had 
time to see how the men who ruled the realm they 
fought for, took their ease and dwelt in wealth and 
peace. They had no such good things, but it was 
not long ere they made up their minds that they 
would like them as much as the Fu-ji-wa-ra. So they 
went to live at Ki-o-to, the chief town of the realm 
and the place where the court was held, and where 
all the great and rich lords dwelt. At the same time 
the Ku-ge saw that if they did not take care, the 
fame these chiefs won in the wars would raise 
them too high in the state. Now the court (which 
had no might at arms it-self) was most glad to 
have the chiefs put an end to these brawls when 
they rose. But the court lords did not like it at 



How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 71 

all when there came to be signs that the Bu-ke 
would be as great as they. Their first step to 
check this, was to make a rule that the court 
should not give high rank to an-y Ta-i-ra or Gen, let 
his claims be what they might ; then they sent word 
that the bands of self-made men-at-arms, which had 
spread through a large part of the realm in the past 
few3/ears, must not join the ranks of these sho-guns; 
but this did not do much good, for the men did as 
they chose, and they did not choose to leave chiefs 
who paid them so well, and of whom they had 
grown so fond. Then they tried to set one clan to 
check the oth-er, and that, too, did not work well. 
But if they could not make an-y one else serve mean 
tricks on these great sho-guns, they did it them- 
selves. When the Gen clan brought all the North 
of Hon-du in-to the em-pire, and for most a score of 
years kept the whole of the Ku-an-to in peace, and 
went so far as to pay costs that the realm should have 
borne from their own funds, they made the court take 
no note of it at all ; and when the chiefs asked forsom.e 
gifts or pay for the men in the ranks, who had fought 
for all this, the Ku-ge sent no word back at all, and 
would not so much as let the Mi-ka-do own what 
they had done in his name, but spoke of the whole 
thing as some feuds of their own. So the Gen and 
the Ta-i-ra chiefs took it on them-selves to give grants 



72 History of Japan. 

of land to their men, and thus most of the men-at- 
arms grew to feel still more bound to their sho-guns 
and to think still less of the Court. 

Step by step the Gen clan, which was the more 
strong of the two, got hold of some of the posts of 
note in the rule of the state ; and all might have 
still gone well if these two great clans could have 
kept on good terms ; but the house of Gen could not 
bear to see the men of Ta-i-ra rise in fame, and the 
Ta-i-ra, just as bad, felt a pang each time they saw 
a Gen gain a jot in name, or rank, or wealth. At 
last a cause was found to bring them to strife — 
which was the claims of two prin-ces to the throne. 
It was clear then that the side which won and made 
its prince the Mi-ka-do, would hold first rank in 
his realm ; and they fought in a long hard strife for 
the prize. The chief who led the side that won at 
last, was Ki-o Mo-ri of the Ta-i-ra race. He was a 
young man who had been full of fire and life, and 
thirst for fame from the time he was a small boy. 
He had been bred to arms, and ere he was a score 
of years old he had made a cruise of much note to 
get hold of some sea thieves that had done a great 
deal to vex the Jap-a-nese. Part of his life was 
spent at Ki-o-to and part in the field of war at the 
South, so he knew the ways of town and court, as 
well as of war, when the time came for him to take 



How Japan Fell Under Alilitary Rule. 



73 



the place of his sire as one of the chief men of state. 
It was in the same year that the two prin-ces laid 
claim to the throne, and the house of Ta-i-ra took 
sides with Ki-o Mo-ri while his foe had the aid 
of the Gen or Min- 
a-mo-to clan. It was 
in a way, like Eng- 
land's war of the Ro- 
ses ; the Ta-i-ra with 
their red flags, and 
the Gen with their 
white, fought hard 
each for its own 
prince. The Ta-i-ra 
won, for they got 
the house of the em- 
per-or out of the -^F'' 
hands of all the rest, I| 
and their prince was ^H 
put on the throne; ^ 
and from then till 
now no one in the 
realm has had so 
much sway as the 
head of the set on the side of the Mi-ka-do. Ki-o 
Mo-ri now had the rule of all Ja-pan in his own 
grasp ; for the Mi-ka-do knew it was through him 




OF-FI-CER IN COURT DRESS. 



74 History of Japan. 

that he had the throne, so he gave him his way in 
all things — as he could not help but do. 

Ki-o Mo-ri let no chance go by to raise him-self 
and his house ; and at last he held a place in the 
realm at the head of all the rest of the great men of 
state, and the sons of his race were in most of the 
best posts, both at court and in arms. And he, too, 
kept his place in the guard at arms. This is how 
the house of Ta-i-ra came to be the most strong- 
in the realm — and more strong than the Fu-ji- 
wa-ra had been. This is how, too, that the sho-guns 
and the rest of the class that in times past had had 
no place but on the field of war, now came to have 
the whole of the realm in their hands. It was the 
first of what is known as the mil-i-ta-ry rule — which 
brought great change to Ja-pan, and was kept up for 
sev-en hun-dred years; for it fell but a score of years 
a-go. Ki-o Mo-ri was at the head of all the Jap- 
a-nese troops, and ere long he was in all but name 
the em-per-or of the realm ; he had rid him-self of 
all his foes in court and out of it ; he and three- 
score of his kins-men held most of the high posts in 
the realm ; they had great wealth, for the tax of 
more than thir-ty fiefs went to them ; they built 
grand homes in Ki-o-to and else-where, and at last 
he made two of his sons sho-guns of first rank, and 
his girl-child the wife of the boy Mi-ka-do then on 



76 Histoiy of Japan. 

the throne. The Fu-ji-wa-ra had no might at arms,, 
and were, by the rise of the Ta-i-ra, put in the shade 
for all time ; and Ki-o Mo-ri did not rest till he had, 
as he thought, got all the Gen folks out of his way, 
so that through a long line the race of the Ta-i-ra 
might be the chiefs of the great Em-pire of the Ris- 
ing Sun. But his wish did not come to pass. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE RULE OF THE HOUSE OF GEN. 

Though Ki-o Mo-ri had put to death the chief 
men of the house of Gen, lest they should rise up in 
their strength and drive him from the high place he 
had won, he had said he would spare the lives of 
two of the old chief's sons. The first one, from 
whom he had the most to fear, was dead, he 
thouo^ht, and the vouno^ ones were sent to live with 
some Bud-dhist monks and grow up to be priests. 
But Ki-o Mo-ri should have known that these boys 
had the hot blood of their brave sires in then' veins, 
and since he had been so bad as to kill them, he 
should have done the same to their sons if it was 



The Rule of the House of Ge?i. yj 

his wish to keep all he had won for his own 
race. 

The first son, Yo-ri-to-mo, had got off with his 
life, as well as the two young ones, though he was 
in the last fight which his sire lost and had the ill 
luck to fall m the hands of one of the Ta-i-ra men. 
But through the aid of some folks who felt for the 
boy, he was not put to death, but was sent to live 
far off in the fief of Id-zu, in the care of two Ta-i-ra 
men. He had the gilts of a great man ; his will 
was strong, his heart brave ; he knew how to feel 
joy, grief or wrath and not show them in his face ; 
he could bear a great deal, as he had to both in the 
fall of his race and in the ills of war. At the same 
time he won the love and best will of those he was 
with. So when the proud, hard ways of Ki-o 
Mo-ri got to such a pitch that a prince of the blood 
made up his mind to rid the realm of him if he had 
to put him to death, this prince knew that Yo-ri-to- 
mo and the Gen clan would be just the men to help 
him. He wrote to Yo-ri-to-mo, and he in turn 
wrote to his bold young broth-er, Yosh-it-su-ne, and 
to his friends, to join him and take up arms to put 
down the old foe of their race. 

Now there was not in all the isles of the realm a 
knight more great and good than this Yosh-it-su-ne. 
He was not so old as his broth-er by twelve years, 



^2) History of Japan. 

but he was, as we say, the " flow-er of his age." He 
had been put with his small broth-er to live with 
the monks when his sire was put to death, but he 
had too much love for life and sports, and was too 
true a son of the Sho-gUn, to want to spend his years 
with books ; so one day he ran off from the monks' 
house with some man of trade who had come from 
the East to sell steel to the folks who dwelt near the 
monks. The man did not want to take him, but 
the boy would go, and they soon came to be warm 
friends. On their way they made a stop at 
Kad-zu-sa, which was then a prey to a band of 
thieves, with whom Yosh-it-su-ne had some fights 
and did such bold deeds to drive them out that his 
friend had to beg him not to put forth his strength 
too much or the Ta-i-ra would hear of it and know 
at once from what race he came; and that would be 
the end of him. So the young man kept as still as 
he could and went on with his friend to Mut-su, 
where he went to live with a prince of the old Fu-ji- 
wa-ra house. He spent his time in the chase, in 
the sports of which he was fond, and in drill at 
arms; and in the mean-time he grew to be strong 
and brave, and in all things the type of a Jap-a-nese 
knight. When the call came to him from Yo-ri- 
to-mo he went to the field at once, and the grand 
fight that he made for the pride of his race did more 



The Rule of the House of Gen. 



79 



to place the house of Gen at the head of the state 

and to drive out the Ta-i-ra than all the spread of 

Yo-ri-to-mo, though he got the place of chief and 

most of the spoils. In the first of this fight, when 

the Ta-i-ra race and 

the house of Gen 

met in strife once 

more, the Ta-i-ra 

beat Yo-ri-to-mo 

and he had to flee 

for his life. But 

he found a new 

band that would let 

him lead them, and 

ere long^ he made 

up a 1 arge force 

from the folks who 

had once been led 

by his sires, but 

who till now had 

held back in fear of 

the might of the 

Ta-i-ra sway. Like 

,1 , T BAR-BERS. 

the true J ap-a- 

nese Sho-gun that he was, when he found the 
folks glad to join with him, he lost no time ere he 
had made up a large force and got them all in fine 




So History of Japa?i. 

shape for war. He woke his clan up to new hfe, 
and drew to his side not a few of the men who had 
lost their love for the Ta-i-ra or had found their 
schemes at Court to fail, and would now put forth 
all the might they had to push on the plans of their 
great arch-foe. In the mean-time Ki-o Mo-ri had 
been at work and had got up a large force which was 
sent to the East just in time to get to one side of 
the Fu-ji Riv-er just as Yo-ri-to-mo came up to the 
oth-er. But this is the most swift of all the streams 
in Ja-pan, and though both troops had a great wish 
to meet and fight, they could not cross the flood. 
At last the Ta-i-ra took fright and fled in haste, sure 
that the Gen were at their heels, while they, for their 
part, soon went back to Ka-ma-ku-ra, where Yo-ri- 
to-mo set out to build a great town that in time came to 
be more grand in size and wealth and to have more 
sway in Ja-pan than old and great Ki-o-to it -self. 
He now made it his work to build up the might of 
this town and fix the sway of the Gen house here, 
and to wipe out the name of Ta-i-ra from the face of 
the earth. In the mean-time his broth-er and 
brave kins-folk led the hosts in the fierce war which 
soon spread through the whole realm. Ere long 
Ki-o Mo-ri fell sick and died at Ki-o-to, and his 
son took his place at the head of the house of Ta-i-ra ; 
but the star of that race was now on its down-ward 



The Rule of the House of Ge7z. 8i 

course^ for the Gen troops won in the East, in the 
North, and the West, and at last they got Ki-o-to 
it-self, the chief town, the seat of the court and state, 
in their hands. The Ta-i-ra, the young Mi-ka-do, 
his folks and near friends, had to flee, while his 
broth-er was put on the throne and the wealth of the 
proud Ta-i-ra went to the chief who had sent them 
iorth. Yosh-it-zu-ne, then the first man-at-arms of 




PUN-ISH-MENTS. 



the whole realm, went so far as to lay siege to the 
forts where the Ta-i-ra had tried to set up their 
strength and to plan means by which to get back 
what they had lost ; and he drove them from place 
to place till at last they were on the sea, where each 
had a fleet of junks that met in a great fray that 
was to bring the dread war to an end. Though the 
Gen had all the odds in this fray, the Ta-i-ra fought 



82 History of Japan. 

best, and would have won if one of their men had 
not been false to them and lent aid to Yosh-it-zu-ne. 
It was a fierce fight to the end, and the day was not 
won till there was scarce a child of the Ta-i-ra left 
in all the fleet. Then all that were on land 
were sought out and put to death ere their foes felt 
free to be gay o-ver the great things they had done 
and the way they had paid off to the race of Ki-o 
Mo-ri the score he had left them when he slew their 
sire to make way for his own rise. 

While this dread strife went on Yo-ri-to-mo's great 
task was to build up his strength and sway at Ka- 
ma-ku-ra, and to keep on in his plans till he had the 
whole of the real rule of the land in his hands. So 
it came round that Ja-pan at last was un-der two- 
fold form of rule. The Mi-ka-do, at Ki-o-to, was 
still the Em-per-or, and held his court as the great 
head of the realm. Though no one else had such a 
thought as to take the throne, his reign was not 
his rule ; while the great Sho-gun, who still had 
to own the Mi-ka-do as his chief, had the reins of 
rule. He had a seat and sort of court of his own, 
three hun-dred miles from that ot the Mi-ka-do's. 
He made more than one change in the state, chief 
of which was to form a coun-cil, which saw to the 
ways and needs of the realm. He set up a court, 
too, which tried all who did an-v crime, most of all 



The Rule of the House of Gen. 



83 



the thieves (of which there were then great bands in 
Ja-pan). Scores of new ways to deal with the folks 
were laid out and brought up to the Mi-ka-do, who let 
them be put in force in his name, though some of 
them were far from the old forms of his sires, and not 
just what he would have done him-self. In this way 
Yo-ri-to-mo got the roy-al word to wipe out the Ta-i-ra 
house from all the posts of trust, and to put his own 



ini|iiiilii'i,J !|ji"4 

'Hll I f'TTii \\m\ 




PUN-ISH-MENTS. 



kin in their stead. He took arms and all tools of 
war from the monks, too. They had come to have 
o^reat stores of this sort, and could use them with 
much skill, so that when they felt they had cause to 
fight they could oft send out as fine a set of troops 
as was kept by the state m an-y part of the realm. 
They had wealth, too, and so far lost sight of the 
aim they laid claims to in life, that they kept them- 



84 History of Japan. 

selves like sets of real troops, in trim to break forth 
an-y day and fight the cause of an-y side they chose 
to take. This was not good for the realm, and Yo- 
ri-to-mo soon broke it up. Thus, step by step, he 
got more rights from the throne and brought things 
round to suit him-self, till at last he had a sure place 
as the head of the realm. 

In five great fiefs sho-guns were put in charge, 
where there had been gov-ern-ors of the civ-il class ; 
in the small fiefs, the civ-il gov-ern-ors were made to 
share their posts with (or to yield them in all but 
name) to chiefs-at-arms of the Gen race ; and in all 
parts of the realm a tax was laid on to keep them 
in troops, so that a good force might be on hand at 
all times, and there would be no need to call out the 
troops of the East when small feuds broke out in 
strife. Ere long he sent folks to live in the 
lands of the North and the East which had 
been made to own the sway of the Mi-ka-do and 
pay tax to him. Soon those lands were made 
a part of the realm, with the same form of rule 
as the rest. Still more lands at the North did 
he add, and from the year 1180 on he had more 
might than an-y man in the em-pire, e-ven the 
Mi-ka-do him-self, and all the lords of the court 
paid to him the most high hon-orsthat were known to 
them. In that year he made a vis-it to the Mi-ka-do 



The Ways of War in Feztdal Times. 



85 



and when he went back to Ka-ma-ku-ra, it was with 
more sway in the state than the old Fu-ji-wa-ra had 
held at an-y time, and more might at arms than the 




PLOW-ING AND SOW ING A RICE FIELD. 



great house of Ta-i-ra had known. In a few years 
he was made Sei-i Ta-i Sho-gun, or Great Gen-er-al, 




AT WORK IN A RICE FIELD. 



which was a rank that had not been known in Ja- 
pan ere this, but which was kept up till 1868. From 



86 History of Japan. 

that time it meant much more to be a sho-gun than 
it had in the past; it meant so much that folks 
who went to Ja-pan from strange lands, thought 
that there were two heads of the em-pire. But that 
was not so. Great as was the Sho-gun's rule, it was 
at all times in the name of his lord, the Mi-ka-do 
at Ki-o-to. 

With this last rise of Yo-ri-to-mo peace came to 
Ja-pan, and the great Gen-er-al spent the prime of 
his life in plans to make his rule sound and sure, 
and to have his sons and all his race brave and 
strong, so that they could hold the place he had 
made for them through all the years to come. 

But there is one blot of his fair name. So long 
as he could use men for his own aims he was good 
to them, but as soon as he thought they might come 
to be great in them-selves, in fear that they might 
rise to out-shine him, he got them out of the way ; 
and most of all he did this with his good broth-er 
Yosh-it-zu-ne, who, in truth, won more for Yo-ri- 
to-mo than the great Sho-gun did for him-self, but 
who won so much love from all folks as well as such 
great fame by his deeds in war, that his broth-er 
came to fear lest he should rise too high, and then 
to hate him, and at last to o^ive word to have him 
put to death. But though Yo-ri-to-mo got all that 
he tried to, and more, and ranks as one of the first 



88 History of Japan. 

of all Ja-pan's great men in the state and in arms, 
it is not he, but Yosh-it-zu-ne, whose name is now- 
held most high, whose place is thought to be with 
the gods, and to whom the folks have built shrines 
and pray. The young folks are told the tale of his 
life and his great deeds ; his face is on their kites ; 
and they all think of him as the type of what a true 
Jap-a-nese knight should be. Yo-ri-to-mo spent his 
life to serve him-self, and when he died his rule fell, 
his town was burnt to the ground, and he was put 
in his grave with few to think of him in time to 
come. But his young broth-er's fame still lives, and 
the boys of Ja-pan are still taught to be good and 
brave, and to have high aims in their lives as this 
knight of old had in his. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WAYS OF WAR IN FEUDAL TIMES. 

It WAS in Yo-ri-to-mo's day that feu-dal-ism 
spread it-self through most all parts of the realm. 
It got its start back near the close of the eighth 
cent-u-ry, when the Court made the plan to have a 
force of home ranks in each part of the realm, and 



The Ways of War in Feudal Times. 



89 



to raise such a host of new troops had said that all 
those of the rich farm folks who were strong and 
smart, and who knew how to use the bow and ride 
a horse well should bear arms, and form a new 
class, known as the Sam-u-rai, while the rest who 
were weak of mind or limb should keep on and till 
the soil. And, more than that, it was said that there 




MAK-ING BRIDG-ES. 



should be naught to keep an-y of these Sam-u-rai 
who fought well and bore them-selves like true 
knights, from the most high posts that a man-at- 
arms could hold. Thus there was a prize in view 
for each of these larm-born guards, and not a few 
of them soon won a place and high rank in their 



«90 History of Japan. 

troops. But ere a plain man like this could be put 
in charge of the Mi-ka-do's troops, he must needs go 
to Ki-o-to to serve as a court page, wait on some 
great lord or fill some place where he could learn 
how things were done in the name of the throne. 

But they learnt more than that at Court ; they 
learnt how court folks did for them-selves at Ki-o-to ; 
they saw the strife for rank and fame that w^ent on 
all the time with the lords great and small ; and 
when they went back to their homes, their minds 
were full of plans to do the same thing in a small 
way. The folks where they dwelt were sure to 
think more of them for their stay at Ki-o-to and all 
they must have learnt of the ways at court, than of 
those who had not been to tow^n ; and so they 
oft came to rule quite large parts of the fiefs in which 
they dwelt. When they were sent for at Ki-o-to 
they would not go; nor did the Ku-ge Gov-ern-ors of 
the fiefs dare to do aught to them, for they had 
arms and steeds and men in their train to make up 
a good strong band for fray. In this way a large 
class grew up and spread through Ja-pan who 
called them-selves men-at-arms (though they would 
serve an-y great chief for pay) and who did a great 
deal to help on small feuds and clan-fights which 
were apt to spread till the whole fief was in a brawl ; 
and the Court would have to send out a force in 



I'he Ways of War in Feudal Times. 91 

charge of a Ta-i-ra or Gen chief to check the strife. 
Now these chiefs, or sho-guns, would not make up 
all their force from the ranks of the realm but would 
get the aid of some such bands as those he was sent 
to quell who were not yet in the brawl, but were at 
all times glad to take part in a fray if they knew 
they would be well paid for it. 

Thus you see these men who took up arms in 
their own right grew more strong and not less so, as 
would have been best for the Court rule ; and, as 
time went on, there grew to be ties that bound the 
men in clans to this or that chief for whom they 
fought, so that they would not leave him for an-y 
thing. 

In the mean-time the folks came to feel more and 
more that the Court had lost its hold on them ; and 
while they still thought of the Mi-ka-do as their 
great king, the Son of Heav-en, whose word was 
law and who owned them as his slaves, they did not 
serve him, but some ''great name" or Dai-mi-o, as 
the Jap-a-nese say, in his stead. To the clan of 
some strong prince they would be bound for peace 
and war. They would fight his cause with glad 
hearts, and if he were slain, they would die, too. 
By their strength and zeal, he could soon claim the 
whole fief, and rule all folks as much as those who 
bore his arms. Those who worked the farms, kept 



92 History of Japan. 

shops or plied a trade, all came at last to be in the 
care of some chief to whose fort-like house they 
could flee in time of harm and whose band of brave 
men-at-arms was on hand at all times to do his 
will. And the tax — ^ which was of so much rice 
— these folks did not pay to the realm, as had been 
their wont, but to their chiefs, who spent their 
wealth on their clans, on them-selves and their 
homes. The home of a Dai-mi-o, with its walls and 
moats, its vast courts and high tow-ers, was like a 
great fort, with-in which was a small town. At its 
gates there was a lodge, where a guard of armed 
men was kept at all times ; and though a man from 
some oth-er clan might be made at home in all parts 
else of the great chief's house, he was not at an-y 
time let to go in-to the fort in-side where the 
Dai-mi-o's arms and wealth were kept. This 
was the rule with all clans. The Jap-a-nese 
knights, like those of the West, had a high sense of 
what was due their chief and right for them-selves, 
and a long code of rules, as to what was due them 
from both friend and foe and what they should do 
to both. 

No man held so low a rank that by brave deeds 
and good faith to his chief he might not rise to a 
high place in charge of a large force, with a great 
name and much wealth ; and when such a rise was 



The Ways of War in Fezidal Times. 



93 



made it was a grand time in the fort and through 
the whole fief. The Sam-u-rai, of which these knights 
were one class, have long been the most bright 
type of all the Jap-a-nese folks. They have done 
more than hold the fiefs and fight the wars of their 
clans ; they were her first trav-el-ers and men of 
books and of arts. They — we are told — are the men 




STREET IN YO-KO-HA-MA. 



whose minds have been the best and the most quick 
to learn, and the most wise to act. It was of this 
class that the plan of feu-dal-ism was born ; and it 
Avas they who broke it up, swept down the sho-gun 
rule in 1868, put the reins once more in the Mi- 
ka-do's hands and said, we will send our young men 
to the great West and will wake Ja-pan out of her 



94 History of Japan. 

past, and make her a realm of the new world. They 
were in the Mid-die A-ges, as now, the soul of the ;. 
realm. As they are now the best men in this new [ 
age of peace, they were the best chiefs, the best rank 
and file in the old days. J 

A Sam-u-rai, then, was not seen out of doors that 
he did not have his two swords — a long and a short ' 
one — at his belt. A guard was at the gate of his i 
house — or his fort, if he was a great man — all the 
time ; and on the porch, in front of his house, there | 
were spears, both great and small ; bows and darts, ( 
and more than one war-ax would be set on their | 
butts to be at hand in case of need. In the halls I 
were coats of mail and all the dress for war, as well , 
as long spears, which the wom-en of the house knew 
how to use m case foes should come on the place 
when the men were not there. 

The men-at-arms of those days bore shields and i 
wore casques, and suits of mail, made of chain or < 
of scales, some of iron, brass or steel, and some (^ 
of shark-skin or the hide of beasts made hard. More 1 
stuffs than these were made use of some-times ; for j 
in their war-tools, as in all their home things, the (j 
Jap-a-nese made great use of lac-quer, a sort of |. 
fine, hard var-nish that they made from the gum 
of a tree and spread on met-als, on wood, on pa-per 
and a great ma-ny things to give them a hard sur- 



96 History of Japan. 

face, as well as to make them smooth and brignt to 
look at. 

The Jap-a-nese ranks were a fine sight to see 
when they set out for the field of war. Since the 
land was so much made up of hills and vales, or the 
wet plains where rice grew, they had small use for 
horse-men, and most of the troops were on foot. 
The race, you know, as a rule, is not so large as 
ours ; but the men were straight and of good shape, 
bore their arms well and made a bright show with 
their suits ol black, white, blue, green, gold and 
sil-ver mail, the gay cords that bound their sword 
hilts, and their grand crests, and the silk of their 
dress that could be seen here and there when there 
was a gap in the mail. They bore tall spears in 
their t -inds that caught the sun, and the casques 
of thcir chiefs were some-times as much as three feet 
tall. Drums, sticks of hard wood, with which to 
clap, and conch-shells, made up their band, and 
gave them the calls of the march, the camp, and the 
field. 

The Jap-a-nese learnt ma-ny arts of war from the 
Chi-nese, through Co-re-a, but, as with all that they 
learnt from that land, they made much change in 
them to suit their own needs. For a time they 
would try one mode, then some new one, but at last, 
in the rule of the Ash-i-ka-ga, two men brouo^ht forth 



'^he Ways of War in Feudal Times. 



97 



the best that had yet been tried ; and that was kept 
in use till the great - ,- - . ;/- yy. ^ 

change of late years, ' ' ^ ^'"^'^^ 

whenthe Jap-a-nese - f.^ 

gave up then' own 
modes of war-fare 
forthoseof Eu-rope. 
In the field, a rain 
of darts from each 
side was most of 
the time the way a 
fray be-gan. Then 
there would be a 
fight the length of 
the whole line for a 
time till the strife 
grew so fierce that 
the ranks got in one 
great mob, where 
each man's sole 
thought was to cut 
off all the heads he 
could with his 
sword. It was not 
a rare thing for the p 
chief of each side ^B 
to come out in front 




WIN-TER DRESS OF THE FISH-ER-MEN AND PEAS-ANTS. 



98 History of Japan. 

of the ranks, and to spare their troops, end the 
strife by one hand-to-hand fight. When they 
met by chance in the great fray, it would 
be the same. Their men would slack their strife : 
they could give no aid to their chiefs, but had to 
stand to one side to watch the fight, and each 
band would call the name of their own man to cheer 
him on. The fight would rage till one of them had 
cut off the head of his foe. Then with the poor 
wretch's head held high in his hand, he would shout 
his name and yell it out that he had won the day. 
This would bring the strife to the same end as it 
the whole force of the foe had been cut down, and 
the clan of the chief who had won would shout their 
praise of his feat. Then those who had slain an-y 
foes of note had to pass in front of him and show 
him the heads they had cut off, at which he would 
give them such gifts as were thought meet 
for such brave deeds. If an-y had saved the life 
of the chief on the field, he was raised to a post 
of most high rank in the clan. 

On the side that lost, those men who had been 
hurt would fall on their swords or kill them-selves 
in some wa3% so as not to fall in-to the hands of 
their foes ; and an-y chief or man of note in the 
ranks would cut or flay his face so that it would 
not be known b}^ the foes ; for if they found it they 



The Ways of War in Feudal Times. 99 

would take great pride in it and put it in some place 
where scores of folks would see it and say how great 
was the man who could kill him. This was the right 
thing for all true knights to do in those days ; and, 
more than that, there would be not a few of a chiefs 
men who, though not hurt at all, would take their 
own lives ; for it was not right, they thought, that 
they should live if their chief was slain. 

When a force laid siege to a fort or a town, or the 
great house of some dai-mi-o, they built up in front 
of their camp a sort of screen of planks, with a steep 
slant. At the gates of these stood guards. A 
watch was kept on the hills, in high trees, or tow-ers 
built up for that use ; and some-times huge kites that 
would hold a man were flown, and a bird's eye view 
was got of what lay with-in the walls of the foe. 
The facts thus learnt had much to do with the way 
the siege went on. Some-times the plan would be to 
starve them out ; some-times to set fire to them, or 
shoot at them at long range ; some-times feints of 
good-will would be made, or a ruse would be tried ; 
and then, if all else were in vain, a charge would be 
made and the hosts would fall on the fort, smash in 
the gates, scale the walls, and take the place by 
storm and at the point of the sword, if the folks 
could not cut them down and drive them back ere 
they got so far. 



lOO History of Japan. 

The work of those who held the civ-il posts in the 
realm was not great in these days. They had to 
see that the lolks were dealt with in just terms ; that 
those who did wrong paid for their crimes ; that no 
man took or had to give up more than his due. 
They had to hear both sides of no end of small 
feuds and set them at rest, and to take the tax from 
the folks at set times. This was quite a gay time 
with the farm folk. When the rice crops were well 
in, each man would put the share that he was to pay 
to the realm in straw bags and fix it in nice shape to 
go to the town where he must pay it. Then in fet6 
dress him-self, and with his horse made gay with 
flaps and straps of red, a small bunch of bells here 
and there, he would put the rice bags on the beast 
and set off to pay his tax and have a good time with 
the friends he would be sure to meet on the road and 
at the end of the route. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE WAYS OF PEACE IN FEU-DAL TIMES. 

A REAL peace that spread through the whole realm 
and that they felt would last was not known to the 
Jap-a-nese till the time of I-ye-ya-su in the six-teenth 



The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 



lOI 



cent-u-ry ; yet all through the long age of war there 
were times now and then, when no great strife shook 
the land and when the folks could think of the arts 
of peace, could work at crafts and give their minds 
to books and things that have naught to do with 




RE-CEP-TION OF A HIGH FUNC-TION-A-RY . 



war ; and they came to do a great deal in these arts 
that the rest of the world looks at with awe for the 
skill and the taste that they see. As feu-dal-ism 
grew, so did Bud-dhism ; and with it there came 
from Chi-na a long list of arts and thoughts, crafts 
and trades, that were new to the Jap-a-nese, but 



I02 History of Japan. 

which they soon took up and brought to a state that 
has not been known an-y-where else. And it was 
in Ki-o-to that this work, hke all else in the life 
of the Jap-a-nese, got to its height. In the first 
part of 'feu-dal times this was the head of the 
Em-pire in all things ; it was the seat of the Mi-ka-do 
and his Court and the chief sho-guns. There was 
the Guard of the Em-pire ; there dwelt the high lords 
of the Ku-ge, and the chief priests of all sects of the 
Bud-dhist faith. It was the source from which went 
the streams that gave to the realm its faith, its 
thoughts and much of its work. There the chief 
tem-ples and homes for the monks were first built 
and may still be seen. It was the Ho-ly Cit-y for all 
the sects ; and to it went priests and monks from 
far-off towns or way-side shrines, that they might, as 
they felt, drink from the stream of their faith, where 
it was near the source and pure. They would see 
the chief priests of their sect, pray at the great 
shrines, read the good books and be taught of the sage 
monks whom they felt to be close to the soul of Bud- 
dha — for you know it is taught in this faith that one 
goes through life ma-ny times, and each time in 
some new state, till at last he gets so pure that 
Bud-dha takes him to be a part of him-self, which is 
the height of bliss and the last stage of his life. 
When a priest who had been in Ki-o-to went 



The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 103 

back to his home, It was a great time for the whole 
place. The folks felt that he had drunk at the fount 
of life and would go in throngs to see him ; while 
the priests of his own shrine heard him with awe, 
and gave place to him as to one more wise, more 
blest than them-selves. 

To this great town the young men of high rank 
Avere sent from the most far-off parts of the realm, 
to be taught to read and write by the priests, to 
learn the arts of war in the drill of the Ki-o-to ranks, 
which were known to be the best in the land. 
There, too, a young man would learn the fine ways 
of high life, as a page or a guest of some great lord 
of the court ; for in ways of life, in forms, in speech 
and in all things else the folks of Ki-o-to set the rule 
for the rest of Ja-pan, and he who had learnt there 
could not fail to know. It is said to this day 
that there are no folks in the world who have more 
grace in their ways or who are in all things what we 
call well-bred more than those one finds in the fair 
Ki-o-to. There dwelt the best learnt folks of the 
time : men and wo-men who wrote verse and prose ; 
it was a court dame who wrote the first tale or nov-el 
m Ja-pan. There dwelt the men who first wrote 
down the past e-vents of the realm, who laid down 
its laws, and who taught both small and great by 
w^hat rules they should live to be good. And from 



I04 History of Japan. 

the time that they came to know how to read and 
write, a great deal was made of those things. In 
most of the fine homes of the great lords there were 
rooms for the use of an-y one who had the gifts to 
write, where one could look out on a fine view which 
should fill the mind with grand thoughts, and write 
them as they came : the small stand, ink-stone and 
brush would be sure to be near at hand. 

The Jap-a-nese wo-men have done a great deal 
of such fine work. It was they, not men, as in the 
rest of the world, who wrote tales and verse, and so 
gave their speech a form in which it should last. 
(For a tongue that is used but in speech, you 
know, will change all the time, and much of the 
words used by the folks of one time will be lost to 
their grand-sons.) To write and make-up lines of 
verse and tales, was one of the ways for the maids 
and dames at Court to pass the time. It was not a 
rare thing to find great gifts in these fair ones who 
were bright and quick of mind, as well as fine to see, 
with their soft skin and dark eyes, the two black 
bars on their fore-heads, in the stead of their eye- 
brows ; with their long hair, black teeth, and 
long, loose robes of rich, bright stuffs. As the 
court dames of the West, they too could sew and 
do fine work with silks and threads ; could play 
chess, pet their small dogs, or chin, paint shells, as 



,i^:?pii 




lo6 History of Japan. 

well as read a great deal and write some of the best 
things the Jap-a-nese have in their old books. 

Not a few of the fine dames of those days, and 
sweet young maids, too, chose the life of a nun ; for 
the Bud-dhist faith soon made the ranks of nuns and 
monks as large in Ja-pan as the faith of Rome did 
in Eu-rope. Like those of the West, they gave up 
the fine things of the world and spent their lives in 
pray-er and work, and good deeds to the sad and 
the poor. Some of these great homes took none but 
folks of wealth and rank, while some bid rich and 
poor, high and low, come drown their grief in Bud- 
dha and be as much at peace as they could. Not 
a few of these were in Ki-o-to, and there a good deal 
of the fine work was done that still wms so much 
praise. It was, though, a great deed in these 
monks to to throug^h the land and raise funds to 
build a shrine, cast a bell, carve or cast an im-age of 
some god, or make some such ho-ly thing. The 
great bells on the monks' shrines of Ki-o-to and 
oth-er towns, had a fame through the whole land. 
Some of them were as tall as a man, and cov-ered 
with rare work, carved or cast. The folks are as 
proud of this rich work as they are fond of the bells* 
sweet, soft sounds. It was a great time In the whole 
town when one was cast. When the chief priest sent 
forth word that one was to be made, the folks brought 



The Ways of Peace in Feudal fimes. 



107 



to the shrine, coin and gifts of bronze, gold, tin and all 
the met-als that could be used. These things were 
put in pots, where |r 
they were made to 
melt with great 
care, and at last, 
when the day on 
which it was to be 
cast would, come, 
a great fete would 
be made. The 
folks, in their most 
gay dress, would 
flock to some hill, 
where, with the 
priest, they would 
watch the work- 
men bring their 
fires to the right 
heat and pour their 
hot flood in-to the 
mold. Then the 
crowd, whose joy 
had grown with 
each stage of the 
work, would break out in song and dance and wild 
shouts, and there would be a grand time for the rest 




MEN AND DAMES OF HIGH RANK. 



io8 History of Japan. 

of the day. But Ki-o-to grew and spread more than 
skill at arms, fine court ways and the Bud-dhist faith 
through her realm in the Feu-dal Age of Ja-pan. 
The arts and trades took great strides at this time. 
Most of us who live in the U-nit-ed States know 
scarce aught else of what is done in Ja-pan than 
what we have seen in the fans and a few bits of 
china, wood and such work. 

Now, the men who made things, whose work was 
a craft, were next in grade to the farm-class, which 
was next to the Sam-u-rai, who had name and rank. 
They did not stand high in the scale of caste, it is 
true, for there was but one class — the folks who 
bought and sold goods — more low than they. There 
were a few grades — such as those who play on the 
stage, who live by alms, tan skins, etc., which the 
Ja-pan-ese looked on as too low to be named at all. 
But crafts-men were good, plain folks. They had 
bright minds for their work, great skill, and much 
taste, and made work that out-strips all the world 
in its line. Men who went to Ki-o-to from far-off 
fiefs would go back to their homes and tell the 
folks there tales they could scarce think true, of 
the pot-ter-y and vas-es, the swords they saw, and 
the fine work in gold and sil-ver and lac-quer 
and gems that were shown in the shops. No doubt 
the tales were true, for books we can trust 



The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 109 

tell us of the same things — some of which are 

now of the past. Most 

of these arts and crafts 

were first taught by the 

Bud-dhist monks who 

learnt them in Chi-na. 

But the Jap-a-nese soon 

found out ways of their 

own, and their things 

soon lost all but a slight 

trace of the Chi-nese. 

Some of the best of 

these crafts-men were 

still monks — men of 

Jap-a-nese birth, who 

spent no end of care 

and time and work at 

their bench. They made 

their things for their 

shrines, but from them 

oth-ers learnt to make 

them for their shops. 

Some of them would 

carve a Bud-dha or some 

god of Ja-pan from a 

rough log, and put on 

it months or years of most fine work so as to 




OF-FI-CER IN STATE DRESS. 



no History of Japan. 

bring out the hairs of the head, the warp of the rich 
stuff of the robe, and all its fine folds. And such 
care as one would give to carve his work out of a 
piece of wood, some one else would spend with his 
clay molds, or at his sheets of bronze, or the pots 
of bronze which must reach just the right heat ere it 
could be cast in a mold. Some made fine in-laid 
work in met-als, which is a lost art now, and 
some made lac-quer work. This art did not come 
from Chi-na, but was found by the Jap-a-nese 
them-selves some time near 900 a. d. Ech-iz-en 
is a place that has fame for her great men and 
scenes of war, as well as for her large stock of 
fine lac-quer trees and the skill with which her 
men get and use the milk-white sap, which turns 
black when it has been in the air for a time, but 
which can be made red, brown, green, and still more 
tints. A fine gold lac-quer was made, too, which 
was of rare worth. To use this paint with skill was 
an art, to teach which not a few schools were set up 
in the old days. One made views on land, one on 
sea ; some drew folks, some birds, in-sects, or flow- 
ers ; and some made it their aim to find the best use 
they could of the gold and sil-ver pow-ders. The 
art-ists of to-day still turn to those of the Ho-jo 
times to see the best work that has yet been done in 
that line. 



The Ways of Peace hi Fezidal Times. 1 1 1 

All sci-ence and art in the realm owe much to 
the Bud-dhists. They were not all monks who 
spent their lives in ease. It was by their work that 
more than one bridge was built, paths and roads 
were made. It was their thought and toil that set 
out scores of fruit and shade trees, dug pond and 
ditch from the far-off streams through fields for 
rice ; who laid drains where the ground was bad to 
live on, and who were the first to find more than 
one new pass through rough hills and up peaks that 
led to some rare view or made a short cut from 
place to place. Some of them taught schools, too, 
or were the wise-heads to whom folks went to learn 
all sorts of things. They knew the arts to heal scores 
of ills, and more than one new herb or bulb for the 
sick or for food has been found by them. Few 
knew as much as they of the stars and of math-e- 
mat-ics, to say naught of how well-learnt some of 
them were in their own faith, and how they would 
spend years of toil to add one more book to the 
small store of their shrine or to those of the realm. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LONG SWAY OF THE HO-JO CLAN. 

It was Yo-ri-to-mo's fath-er-in-law, and not the 
sons of the Gen clan that took the Great Sho-gun's 
place. When Yo-ri-to-mo died he left no son so 
firm and strong that he could take up the work of 
his great sire and fill the post he had so long held. 
But there was a man to take his place ; one who 
had no mean rank in the realm him-self. This was 
the fath-er of Yo-ri-to-mo's wife. He was To-ki- 
ma-sa, of the good old house of Ho-jo ; he was a 
man of fine gifts, who knew how to use his might, 
and to get a strong hold on the folks he had to deal 
with. He soon took his son-in-law's place m all but 
name, but he did not hold the sho-gun's rank. On 
Yo-ri-to-mo's death, his son Yo-ri-i-ye, a young 
man eigh-teen years old, was at once made head 
chief of all the Jap-a-nese troops, and it was thought 
that he would ere long take his fath-er's place in all 
things ; but the Jap-a-nese have a phrase which 
means "There is no seed to a great man ;" that is, 



The Long Sway of the Hojo Clan. 



1 1 



they have learnt to look for naught in a great man's 
child. In this case they found their old saw true ; 
for Yo-ri-i-ye had none of the good stuff of his race 
in him, or, if he had, he let it go to waste while he 
tried to have a good time. 
But his grand-sire could 
wield the rod of the Great 
Sho-gun, if he could not, 
and from the time of Yo- 
ri-to-mo's death, the house 
of Gen went down, and 
that of Ho-jo rose. To-ki- 
ma-sa, and his child, Yo- 
ri-to-mo's wife, were both 
folks of more than plain 
gifts, and they had been of 
great aid to the Sho-gun 
from the time he set out to 
put down the Ta-i-ra ; so 
To-ki-ma-sa knew the ins 
and outs of his son-in-law's 
rule as well as most an-y . 
one in the realm. He was 
made chief of the Coun- 
cil of State on Yo-ri-to-mo's death, and soon got 
much of the rights of his grand-son's post in his 
own hands. He let it seem that he did not know 




WO-MAN AND CHILD. 



114 History of Japan. 

that Yo-ri-i-ye had bad ways, and did not fill his 
place as he should ; but all the time he took 
good care to put his friends, and the sons of 
his own house in all the posts in the realm that 
he could get hold of. So time went on, and when 
Yo-ri-i-ye was made Grand Sho-gun in his father's 
place, To-ki-ma-sa still kept the real sway in his 
hands, and ere long he made Yo-ri-i-ye yield his 
place to his broth-er, a lad twelve years old, and 
to shave his head and be a priest in some Bud- 
dhist shrine— and there he was put to death by a 
man in the hire of To-ki-ma-sa. So it came to be 
with the Sho-guns as it was with the Mi-ka-dos, 
that he who bore the name was but a tool in the 
hands of some smart man, full of craft and wit, and 
force, — one who would stoop to an-y thing to get the 
rule of the realm in his grasp, and who wove his net 
so well that both the Mi-ka-do and the Sho-gun were 
bound in it. 

The sway of the house of Ho-jo did not break 
down as soon as those of Ta-i-ra and Gen had done. 
It was kept up for near one hun-dred and two-score 
years, and though none of its sons tried to seize the 
rank of Sho-gun, twelve of them held all the might 
of that place. Of these the third, the fourth and 
the fifth were men of great force, who got a strong 
hold on the realm, and who did much for the good 



The Long Sioay of the Hojo Clan. 1 1 5 

of the state ; some of them made a long search 
through the whole realm for the best men they 
could find to put in the posts of trust. One of them 
was one of the most grand and pure men that w^e can 
learn of in the tale of an-v land ; he did a vast deal 
to drive out bad ways and mean tricks, and all such 
ills as, in all realms, are sure to brew with the men 
who have a share in the rule. One of the Ho-jo set 
up at Ka-na-za-wa a fine stock of Chi-nese books, 
works of the great sage Con-fu-ci-us, of Bud-dhist 
and of the Jap-a-nese, too; for these folks had learnt 
monks to write, with all else that the Co-re-ans and 
Chi-nese had taught them. These books brought 
scores of men, young and old, to the great town, some 
to teach and some to learn the laws and the lore of 
the faith ; for there were few in those days but priests 
who gave their thoughts to books. 

In all these years the post of Sho-gun was held 
for a few years at a time by mere boys, in the hands 
of the Ho-jo, whose rank had the name of Skik-ken, 
but whose sway was more than that of the Mi-ka-do. 
At an-y that they saw fit they would force their Sho- 
gun to leave his place, that they might put some 
child, too young to have a will of its own, in his 
stead. 

It was In the Ho-jo rule that Ja-pan had her first 
great war with folks of a strange land. This was 



Ii6 History of Japan. 

the short fight with the Mbn-gol Tar-tars, who, 
when they had put down the Sung rule in Chi-na 
and set their yoke on the vast realm of Rus-sia to 
the West, and held A-si-a in their grasp from the 
Froz-en O-cean to the Straits of Mal-ac-ca, from Co- 
re-a to A-si-a Mi-nor, sent word to Ja-pan through 
Go-re-a, that they would have from the Realm of 
Isles, gifts and such things as the Em-per-or, Kub- 
lai Khan, thought meet. Ja-pan must show 
that she felt him to be her great chief, too. 
But the Jap-a-nese would do no such thing, and 
though some men came from Chi-na six times, the 
Ho-jo sent them back each time with no good news 
for the Khan. At last the Mon-gol thought he would 
take by force what he had tried in vain to get by 
smooth words, and ere long a host of ten thou-sand 
men were on the shore at Tsush-i-ma and I-ki. All 
Ki-u-shi-u rose up in arms to meet them. They 
made a brave set at these strange foes ; they slew 
their chief, and what men they did not kill, they 
sent back to the Khan with a sad tale of loss 
to tell him. But he would not give up his plan 
and at once sent nine men to wait on the head of 
the realm, to say that they would stay in the Isles 
till they could bear back some word from the Jap-a- 
nese throne to their great lord. But they did not 
go back at all, for all of them lost their heads ere 



The Long Sway of the Hojo Clan. 



117 



they got to Ka-ma-ku-ra. This of course was a sign 
for war, and the Jap-a-nese set to work at once to be 
in trim for the great fight. One more band came 
from the Khan, and met with the same fate as the 
last. Then the -^- - - - 



great 



Mon-gol 



set 
to work to make war 
on the small chain of 
isles that would not 
send gifts to him 
who had swept 
A-si-a and felt that 
he was lord of the 
whole of the East. 
The Jap-a-nese had 
not seen such a sight 
in all their lives as 
the great fleet of 
thir-ty-five hun-dred 
Chi-nese junks, 
whose sails made the 
sea as white as 
snow, and with-in 
whose huge hulks there came one hun-dred and 
sev-en thou-sand men — such an host as Ja-pan had 
not dreamt of. They came, too, with some of 
the arts of war that were used in the West — by 




COR-MO-RANT FISH-ING. 



1 1 8 History of Japan. 

the great troops of Eu-rope, which were far more 
sure than the rude ways of the East. What 
could the small, light boats of the Jap-a-nese do with 
these great things ? Some of them were sunk at 
once, and though the Jap-a-nese were quick and 
full of craft so that now they burnt a great ship and 
now they made their way on board some big, 
proud junk and cut off the heads of its chief men, 
the fight for a long time was so close that no one 
could tell which side would win. Scores of the 
brave men of the isles were cut down and yet the 
great foe could not get on land. Each time a force 
was sent out to the shore it was cut off or sent 
far out to sea. This sort ol strife went on for some 
time till at last the brave Jap-a-nese cap-tain, Mich- 
i-a-ri, made a bold stroke that gave the day to his 
side. He put out from shore with a small band of 
men in two small boats, and the Chi-nese thought no 
one would dare to do this in the face of their great 
fleet if it were not for peace ; so they did not shoot 
at him. But as soon as he was near the great Tar- 
tar junk he flung out ropes with large hooks on 
the end of them, that caught a firm hold on the side 
of the craft and then he and his men leapt on board. 
Bows and spears were no match for the sharp 
swords this brave squad now brought forth, and in 
a short time the close hand-to-hand fight came to an 



A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 1 1 9 

end, and Ja-pan had won. The great junk soon 
went up in flames and those who had not lost their 
Hves in the fray were borne to the shore in the 
bonds of their foes. The rest of the fleet, ere long, 
was made a wreck by one of those fierce storms — 
which we call ty-phoons — that sweep the west coasts 
of the Pa-cif-ic in the last part of sum-mer and the 
first of the fall. It was a scene of woe and of grief 
and loss that can not be told ; and the Jap-a-nese 
say that it was done by the gods who heard them 
•pray to be rid of their foes. It was the last time 
that the Mon-gols tried to set their yoke on the Mi- 
ka-do's realm — and to this day the Jap-a-nese boast 
that at no time has a strange host left the stains of 
camp or war on their land. It was the first and last 
time that an-y realm tried to land its ranks on their 
shore. 



CHAPTER XI 



A BRIEF REIGN FOR THE MI-KA-DO. 

In the long list of Mi-ka-dos who sat on the 
throne while the Ho-jo clan held the reins of state, 
there was more than one who felt his soul chafe at 



1 20 History of Japan. 

the bonds laid on him by those who were his 
slaves by rights ; and not a few of them laid plots 
and made moves, and tried in all the ways they 
could to thwart their Shik-ken. But it was not till 
they were off the throne, with heads shaved and 
priests' robes, that they felt that they could use the 
strength e-ven of plain men in their realm, which in 
name held not a man, a child, or an-y thing that had 
not been theirs while they were on the throne. At 
last Go-to-ba, who had been a Mi-ka-do till near the 
year 1200, but was now a priest and a man of much 
might in the realm, made a bold tri-al to break down 
the Ho-jo strength ; but they beat him in the field 
and then laid the same hold on the throne as on the 
Sho-guns. With this they grew still more strong, 
and so full of pride that their ways were more than 
the rest of the folks could stand. This led to their 
fall. There were now no more such great men as 
had made this race shine in the eyes of all the Jap- 
a-nese in times past. In these days they had 
more love of wealth and thouo^ht more of ease and 
their own joys than of the toil and care they should 
give to their work so as to do their best for the 
realm. To get means to have all the things they 
were so fond of, they bore down on the folks for 
more tax, and at last their proud ways and their 
three-fold yoke on the Mi-ka-do, the Sho-gun and 



A Brief Rcigii for the Mikado. 



121 



mass of the folks came to be more than the realm 
could bear. In the year 1327, or close to that time^ 
the Em-per-or Go-Dai-go made up his mind, with 
the aid of his son, Mo-ri-yo-shi, to risk life and all 




PRAY-ING AT THE TOMBS 



else that was dear to him to break down the two- 
fold form of rule and to eet the reins of state once 
more in the hands of the throne. He knew that 
the mass of Jap-a-nese folks had so much love and 
awe for the Mi-ka-do that he would win if he could 



12 2 Histoiy of Japan. 

but get all the troops it would need to cope with the 
Ho-jo. He got the aid of the Bud-dhist priests, 
and in a few years made a fort of Ka-sa-gi in Ya- 
ma-to, while at the same time a brave man, whose 
name was Ku-sun-o-ki, rose in Ka-wa-chi, who made 
it the aim of his life to bring back the Mi-ka-do's 
rule. The scheme of the Em-per-or came to a sad end 
for him at first. The Ho-jo burnt his fort, got hold 
of him and sent him to live at O-ki, far off from court 
and throne. But though they might keep the Mi-ka- 
do where he could not lead an-y troops on them, they 
could not clear the realm of its hate for their rule, 
nor put out the torch which, now that Go-Dai- 
go had lit it, would burn with a fierce flame till its 
fire had put an end to the Ho-jo for all time. Twice 
they laid siege to the strong-hold of Ku-sun-o-ki, 
but they did not catch him, for he gave them the 
slip one day and lived to make a grand fight for 
his lord and a great name for him-self. 

For some time the Mi-ka-do and his friends felt 
that their fate was most dark, but Go-Dai-go kept a 
stout heart, though far off from his home and in the 
hands of the Ho-jo guards, and at last there came 
forth a brave young man to cut the net of the proud 
Shik-ken and loose the grasp of the Sho-gun rule. 
This young man was Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da. He 
could trace his line back to the grand old house of 



A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 123 

Gen. At the time of Go-Dai-go's war he held a 
good post in the ranks of the Ho-jo, who sent him 
to fight Ku-sun-o-ki. But he would not draw 
sword on the troops of his king, and left the Ho-jo 
when thev bade him do so. The son of the 
Mi-ka-do, who ruled in the name of his sire while 
Go- Dai-go was kept from his throne, at once gave 
him a place in the Mi-ka-do's troops, and then he 
drew all his own men to him — for in those days 
each great man had his own band or clan, as m 
what are known as the Feu-dal Times of Eng-land. 
So ere long Nit-ta was at the head of a good force 
and with them led a war on the Ho-jo. It was a 
hard, fierce strife, but the end of it came when 
Nit-ta set the proud town of Ka-ma-ku-ra on fire 
and burnt it to the ground, and so threw down the 
sway of the great house which had so long held the 
reins of the realm. At the same time Ki-o-to had 
been made free by Ku-sun-o-ki and Ash-i-ka-ga, a 
man whose name came to be great in a few years, 
and the might of the Mi-ka-do was once more set 
up in the West. This was not far from the year 

Word was sent at once to Go-Dai-go to call him 
back to his throne ; and now he was not to hold it 
as a mere tool of some one else, as he had done in 
time past, but to be in fact as in name the sole head 



124 ■ History of Japan. 

and chief of this land. His first task was to do 
some-thing for the brave men who had done so 
much for him. They had won the realm for him, 
and now it was but fair that he should give them 
posts and lands such as they would care most to 
have. The Sho-guns had long made it a rule with 
the Jap-a-nese that those who fought best for the 
realm should have the charge of their best fiefs, and 
with them large clans of men-at-arms. This, then, 
was to be what Go-Dai-go would do by those who had 
gone forth to risk all they had for their king. But 
he was far from wise or just in the way he did this. 
While he should have made his first gifts to Ku- 
sun-o-ki and to Nit-ta, he gave three best fiefs to 
Ash-i-ka-ga Ta-kau-ji, who had fought well, it is 
true, but not best. He had a great deal of craft and 
knew how to serve his own ends and to get in the 
good grace of the Mi-ka-do, so as to raise him-self 
to a place of much might. He was not like Ku- 
sun-o-ki and Nit-ta, whose most dear wish had been 
to break down the might of the Sho-gun and put 
the lull sway in the hands of the Mi-ka-do ; but 
like most of the folks who had fought in their 
lead, he wished to get rid of the Ho-jo, and when 
the hard fight of the two most brave men in the 
realm had torn down their throne, he at once set to 
work in a still way to put him-self and his house in 



A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 125 

their place. There was a girl of the Mi-ka-do's 
house, whom he got to aid him by bribes to make 
Go-Dai-go give ear to his talk and his plans, while 
with the folks he made the most for his own ends 
out of some small ill-will that was felt by those who 
had held low posts in the ranks and had fought 
well to put down the Ho-jo, but felt ill-used now at 
the scant way in which the Mi-ka-do had paid out 
his spoils. These men were more fond of war than 
of peace. They did not care if there were two 
heads to the realm or one, so long as the Sho-guns 
were not in the hands of the proud ■ race of old 
To-ki-ma-sa. Thus Ash-i-ka-ga soon found that he 
could shape things to suit him-self, and that in 
a short time he could start up more war and 
strike for his own high prize. It was a blow 
to him when Go-Dai-go made his own son Sho-gun, 
which was still a post of great pride in the realm ; but 
he did not show his wrath and laid plans to get his 
own wav in the end. The Mi-ka-do had been a 
man of grand force and will when he first held the 
throne, but he had lost his best gifts while he was 
in the bonds of the Ho-jo, far off from his throne 
and all that was dear to him. No one had known 
him to be so weak and vain in the old days, but 
now the words of Ash-i-ka-ga and the young girl 
whom he had paid bribes to talk for him had so 



126 • History of Japan. 

sweet a sound in his ear that he did not stop to 
think if they were true or false. He let them get 
a strong hold on him and would not heed the wise 
men round him who bade him take care and think 
of the rest, who had done as much or more than 
Ash-i-ka-ga to serve him. His thoughts all went 
to this one man. He did not treat Nit-ta as he 
should have done, and he did not place Ku-sun-o-ki 
in such a post as he had the gifts to fill. No doubt 
this man could have done more for the good of Ja- 
pan just then than an-y one in the realm, to say 
naught of what was due him for the great work he 
had done in the field of war. 

The prince had not been Sho-gun for long when 
Ash-i-ka-ga made the Mi-ka-do think that his son 
had laid plots to get the throne ; and when the 
Prmce, stung to the quick by his hate for this base 
foe, and wroth at the lie he had told his sire, gave 
the word to his troops to march to Ash-i-ka-ga \nd 
pay him up for his tales, Ash-i-ka-ga made'^it out 
that the Prince's plan was to snare him first of all, 
so that he could be more sure of his way to the 
throne. ^ In this way he got the Mi-ka-do in so great 
a rage with his son that he gave word to have'^him 
dealt with as if he had in truth turned foe to his sire. 

But the doom of bonds and death had scarce 
been laid on his good son when the Mi-ka-do saw 



A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 



127 



he had been made a dupe of, and, though it was too 
late to bring back his boy, he at once grew cold 
to his real foe. Ash-i-ka-ga saw the change, fled 
from Ki-o-to with great bands of the men-at-arms 
who did not like the ways of things at court, and took 




ai;-Z^/-A/^Jjs^^zi-:^@ 



the place that the Ho-jo had held at Ka-ma-ku-ra, 
which he had built up since the fire. Then the 
Mi-ka-do went back to his first friends. Nit-ta was 
freed from a charge that had been laid on him that 



128 Histo7'y of Japa7i. 

he was false to the throne, and was put at the head 
ot the Mi-ka-do's troops to whip the bold Ash-i- 
ka-ga. But the odds were not on the Mi-ka-do's 
side this time ; he had lost the love of the ranks 
once glad to die for him, and so his force was small, 
while that of his foe was large. His side lost in the 
fight that came on, and he had to flee for his life 
with a small band of his men who still held true. 

Ash-i-ka-ga was lord of the field, but he had 
fought the throne, had drawn arms on the Son of 
Heav-en, and so to the Jap-a-nese he was worse than 
an-y of the Ho-jo. Then he tried to make his wrong- 
deeds seem right and give to the realm a new Mi- 
ka-do. He sought out Ko-gen, a child of one of 
the em-per-ors who had been on the throne ere the 
time of Go-Dai-go. Some of the folks thought he 
had no right there now since the real Mi-ka-do's 
son Mo-ri-yo-shi was in all ways fit for his sire's 
place. But Ko-gen took the seat, and this new Son 
of Heav-en soon made Ash-i-ka-ga Great Sho-gun, 
with all the old state of that post at Ka-ma-ku-ra. 
So the two-fold form of rule was set up once more, 
in less than three years from the time it was thrown 
down. But the change, and still more the fact that 
Ko-gen had been put on the throne, brought on a 
war in which Ash-i-ka-ga and the North, fought the 
South and the real Mi-ka-do. It was kept up for near 



A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 129 

three-score years, and is known as the War of the 
Chrys-an-the-mums. 

This is a long tale of false deeds and true blue, 
of fire and fight, of want on the part of the poor 
folks, and waste on the part of the rich ; and though 
at first it was a sharp strife to put down the claims 
of one Mi-ka-do and fix his foe firm and sure on the 
throne, the true aim was lost at last, and the whole 
realm was a scene of strife, and the war was but the 
brawls of small chiefs for the sake of land — or for 
no good cause at all. Ere it came to an end all the 
great chiefs who had led in it were dead ; the Mi- 
ka-dos them-selves came to feel that it was of small 
note to them how it came out, for most of the men- 
at-arms seem to have lost sight of the fact that they 
had come out to give the throne to their true Mi- 
ka-do. At last, in 1392, Ash-i-ka-ga sent a band of 
his men to the Em-per-or of the South, who held old 
Go-Dai-go's place, to ask him to give the sword, 
the glass, and the ball (which he had borne with him 
when he fled from Ash-i-ka-ga's men) to his Mi- 
ka-do, who held his court in the North. He, they 
said, should be Em-per-or, and the Mi-ka-do of the 
South should be ex-em-per-or, and from then on the 
throne should be held by a son of first one house and 
then the oth-er. The things were sent, and the 
change made with great pomp ; but the Jap-a-nese say 



130 History of Japan. 

to this day that the Hne of the South was that of 
the true Sons of Heav-en, while the hne of the North 
was false — and that, ere long, died out. All Jap-a- 
nese books that are thought to be worth an-y thing 
by the folks, speak of the Mi-ka-dos of Ko-gen's line 
as the ''False" em-per-ors or North-ern em-per-ors, 
which means the same thing. 



CHAPTER XII. 

NIT-TA AND KU-SUN-O-KI. 

In all the long fight of the war of the Chrys-an- 
the-mums, there were two men whose brave deeds 
make them stand out from all the rest who took part 
in the strife. These were Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da and 
Ku-sun-o-ki Ma-sas-hi-ge. They now fought for 
their king as if he had used them as his most dear 
friends while he had his sway, as if they did not 
know how he had let the base Ash-i-ka-ga take what 
was their due, and had lent his ear to that man's 
tales of Nit-ta's bad faith. None of this did they 
let stand in their minds when once more the Mi- 
ka-do had need of their strong arms and their great 
minds on the field of war. Once Nit-ta sent word 



Nitta and Kusonoki. 131 

to Ash-i-ka-ga, ''Come out and meet me and fight with 
me. It is we who lead the two great bands ; come 
forth and we will fight hand to hand ; the side of 
him who lives shall win the war, and so we may 
spare the blood-shed of our men." The Sho-gun's 
men got him to say that he would not do this, but 
ere long they found a chance to cut down the brave 
chief of their foes with-out an-y risk to their own. 
He had set out with some two or three score of men 
to arm a fort one day, but he had not gone far when 
near three thou-sand of the foes fell on them in a 
small path through some rice fields near Fu-ku-i. 
He had no shield, and their darts fell round him 
like rain. His men said fly, but he would not leave 
them, and put the whip to his horse to get near to 
his foes, so as to fight them with the sword, but one 
arrow struck the poor beast while he was at full 
speed, and its mate gave a death blow to the chief 
as soon as he rose. It struck him full in the fore- 
head and gave him scant time to draw^ his sword 
and cut off his head, so that his foes could not tell 
his corpse from those of the rest of his band. And 
the rest went, too, by the hands of the false ranks 
or their own: for it was more grand and good 
in a Jap-a-nese of those days to die with his chief 
than to live on when he was eone. 

Nit-ta's corpse was found, and his head was set 



132 History of Japa7i. 

up at Ki-o-to for all to see ; but his grave was made 
near the spot where he fell, and to this day it is a 
spot that the Jap-a-nese love, and they keep fresh 
flow-ers on it all the time. 

Ku-sun-o-ki died not in the field, but by his own 
hand. His plans were set at naught and he lost his 
fights in the field, so that he felt that there was but 
one thing for him to do ; he must die and leave his 
name pure. This seems strange to us, but to the 
Jap-a-nese, five hun-dred years a-go, it was the part 
of a great man. 

It was said that of all the men in Jap-a-nese his- 
to-ry, Ku-sun-o-ki stands first, for the pure love he 
bore his land, for his strong brave heart to risk his 
life for her sake, and for the way he would give up 
an-y wish of his own to serve his king. The boys 
learn his life, and think of him as their best type of 
a true Jap-a-nese knight, and look on him as the 
great-est man their land has had — as we look on 
George Wash-ing-ton. They could tell you how he 
was taught in the lore ofChi-na by the priests; how 
strong he was of limb, too (for when he was sev-en 
years old he could throw a lad twice his age in a 
wrest-ling match). While he was taught in books, 
he was taught in the arts of war as well ; and was 
so apt in this last that he cut off the head of a foe 
when he was but twelve years old ; he was taught 



Nitta and Kusunoki. 



the forms of drill that the Chi-nese used when he 
was fif-teen, and made avow to him-self that the aim 
in life should be to throw down the rule at Ka-ma- 
ku-ra and give to the Mi-ka-do his rights — this sway 
that had so long been kept out of the hands of the 





JA-PAN-ESE BOATS. 



throne. So he took up arms for Go^Dai-go, and 
though the Ho-jo tried hard to get hold of him, his 
side won at last, with the aid of Nit-ta and Ash-i- 
ka-ga. Then came those years when he was so ill- 



134 History of Japan. 

used, and Ash-i-ka-ga took the place he ought to 
have had, but which could not turn his heart from 
his king an-y more than it did Nit-ta's. Thrice they 
drove the troops of the false Ash-i-ka-ga out of 
Ki-o-to, and when he fled to the West it was Ku- 
sun-o-ki who said, ''Go on, catch him, and break up 
this strife he is at the head of." But the Mi-ka-do 
did not see fit to make use of his plans, and so it 
went on, as we know, from bad to worse, till, in 
spite of all these two great chiefs and their brave 
bands could do, their cause was lost. 

When Ku-sun-o-ki made up his mind to die, he 
said good-by to his wife and his babes, and went to 
a farm house near the small town of Sa-ku-rai, where 
he gave the sword (which was a gift from the MI- 
ka-do) to his son and bade him think of his sire, 
a-venge his death, and bear arms as a good brave 
man should. With that he took his life, and near a 
score of his band — men of his own race — died with 
him. 



CHAPTER XV. 

I-YE-YAS-U AND THE HOUSE OF TO-KU-JA-WA. 

When the Tai-ko died he left his heir, his cares, 
and all the plans that were so dear to him, in the 
hands of I-ye-yas-u, whom he had learnt to trust 
long ere he rose to his high post, and whom he had 
made next to him-self in the State and the Dai-mi-o 
of eight fiefs. His son had been wed to the child 
of I-ye-yas-u, who made an oath that he would fill 
the Tai-ko's place till the boy came to the age when 
he could rule. 

I-ye-yas-u was a man of great parts and of much 
fame, and he made laws with most, if not quite as 
much skill as he made wars, which is a great deal 
to say. His first deeds of note were done while he 
was in a low place in No-bun-a-ga's troops, from 
which he rose till he was one of that great chief's 
first men. He fought well, too, in charge of part 
of Hi-de-yosh-i's ranks ; and in times of peace he 
built him-self a great cas-tle. On the fall of 
the Ho-jo he took the small fort near Yed-do bay 



136 History of Japan. 

yu-ki, was a great man both at books and in arms. 
None of the men who had charge of the Sho-gun's 
work in the Ash-i-ka-ga Age were so great as he, 
who tried to raise the folks from some of their poor 
ways and took more than one step to drive out some 
of the great wrongs in the forms of rule. He held 
his post in the name of the Ash-i-ka-ga heir, Yosh- 
i-mit-su, whom he was to teach and take care of till 
he should reach the age when he might rule. He 
did not do as old To-ki-ma-sa did with the son of 
Yo-ri-to-mo, but gave much thought to have the 
youth learn a great deal from the best men in the 
realm, from books, and in all the arts of war. He 
saw that his friends were well-taught young men of 
first rank, with gifts and skill for all that a young 
Jap-a-nese lord of those days should know. This 
lad was the grand-son of the sire of the house, and 
was the one man of his race who bore the name of 
the '' Great Ash-i-ka-ga." He was made Sho-gun 
and put at the head of the troops when he was but 
ten years old, and ere long he won great fame by 
his brave acts in the wars of the South and West. 
But through one rash act, the cause of which must 
have been his great love for war, be brought the 
curse of his land on his race as well as on his own 
head. This act was that he sent a band of Jap-a-nese 
to Chi-na near the year 1400 with gifts and fine words. 



The Ashikaga Age. 137 

by which they made it known to the proud Em-per-or 
ol that vast realm that Yosh-i-mit-su fek that this great 
Mon-gol had a sort of right to be the chief of Ja-pan 
as well as the rest of the East, but that he would 
beg him to own that Yosh-i-mit-su was Nip-pon — 
or King of Ja-pan. It seems to have been done for 
naught else than to get for the Sho-gun the grand 
name of king. He did not dare to try to get the Mi-ka- 
do's throne, though he had long dwelt in as much 
style as his lord. There was no real cause why the 
realm should have been made to thus bow her head 
to Chi-na, and the man who did it brought hate on 
his name for all time. If the whole land had not 
been in a bad state he could not have done this base 
thing, and as long as his house held the reins of the 
realm, in name or in fact, things went from bad to 
worse. 

In these days there was a great deal of change 
at the head of the state. Some-times the rule was 
at Ki-o-to, where both the Mi-ka-do sat with the 
court that ruled him, and the Great Sho-gun with his 
Shik-ken, more than one of whom in this age held 
the reins from both the Sho-gun and the Em-per-or.. 
Some-times the seat of rule would shift to Ka-ma- 
ku-ra, where a plain sho-gun had sway, or was the 
tool of a man whose rank was not as great as his 
own, though he had more strength of will. 



o 



8 History of Japan. 



Much of the time the heads of the two towns 
were in feuds, as were the clans of most all the 
realm, so that not much else took place in the land 
but fights for clan-pride, for rights to lands, and no 
end of such things. Each clan chief dwelt in a 
great house that was like a fort, and in whose walls 
dwelt scores of his men with their wives and small 
folks. The homes of the monks of Bud-dha, too, 
were like the store-rooms of a great guard-house. 
More than once it was by their aid that a side won. 
To be in trim for war was the plan of all who could 
bear arms. This strife went on for years and years : 
towns were burnt, fields laid waste, all were made poor 
and the folks of high birth as well as the low fled 
to the hills, where they might dwell in caves to be 
out of the sound of strife : and young folks grew up 
with no one to teach them. By-and-by dearth came, 
as it does in all lands in the wake of war, and thou- 
sands of folks, young and old, died for the want of 
food. Men who had been born to live on farms 
were made to join the ranks at arms, while some of 
them grew to be thieves and spent their time in 
raids on towns or on the roads, where they would 
rob an-y one they could catch. And the Mi-ka-do 
was as bad off as his folks. He had no wealth. 
He dwelt at Ki-o-to, which was at all times in the 
hands of a force-at-arms — if not those of the Great 



The Ashikaga Age. 



139 



Sho-gun, then it was those of Ka-ma-ku-ra, the 
troops of the East. 

To this day, if the Jap-a-nese want to tell a tale 
of great woe and wrongs, or if they want to make a 
play of folks who did no end of bad things, they 




A BRONZE WARE-HOUSE AT TED-DO. 



say it all came to pass in the time of the Ash-i- 
ka-ga. 

It was near the close of this age, in the year 1542, 
that a great man by the name of No-bun-a-ga came 



140 History of Japan . 

on the scene to throw down the sway of the proud 
house that had brought so much ill-luck to the 
reahn, to break up the bad ways of the Bud-dhist 
priests, give a good word to a new faith, and bring 
back in part at least the old and long-lost might of 
the Mi-ka-do. 

He came from a race of Shin-to priests, but far 
back he could trace his blood to the great Ki-o 
Mo-ri and the house of Ta-i-ra. His sire had borne 
arms, and, as most of the men of an-y note in those 
days, his aim in life was to get hold of all the lands 
he could win. When he died, he left his arms, his 
land and his feuds to his tall, brave son, who bore 
his charge well. Six fiefs or states did he add to 
those of his sire and much wealth did he gain, so 
that in a few years, he rose to much note in the 
realm. In Ki-o-to he built him a fine house— a 
cas-tle. He was so great that he had the man of his 
choice made Sho-gun in spite of all those who did 
not want him could do. In one of the old books 
of Ja-pan it is told that this prince was a man of 
large frame, but of fine, pale skin, which the Jap-a- 
nese do not think well of in a man. But the book 
says that he had a heart and soul that made up for 
all else he might lack ; he was brave and bold, 
and held high thoughts on what was right and 
wrong, and would see that folks had their just dues 



The Ashikaga Age. 141 

in all things where he had a voice — and it was not 
long ere he had a voice in all things. His wit was 
keen, his will strong, and it was a rare thing for him 
to be wrong in his plans, though his foes did call 
him " Lord Fool " at first. He had been taught in 
all the arts of war, and of all men of his time he 
was known to be the best to take charge of a set of 
troops, to mark out a camp, lay a siege, or hold out 
when one was made on him. He made use of no 
head but his own. Now and then he would ask for 
the views of those who were with him, but it was 
more to find out their hearts than to have the aid of 
their brains. 

He read the hearts and the minds of all the men 
he met, but he let no man read him, and when he 
made up his mind to do a thing he gave the word 
and it was done. He had no small ways and held 
no mean thoughts for an-y one ; he was just and 
some-times more than just, and gave good words 
and good gifts with a free hand. But one thing 
did he hate. That was a false heart. An-y one 
who did not hold true to the land of his birth, to 
his em-per-or or his creed of right and wrong, was 
so low and base in the eyes of this great prince that 
he lost no chance to show him up in his true light. 

It was this hate of what is false, that led him 
to make a great war on the Bud-dhist priests ; 



142 History of Japan. 

and it was his love of what is just and fair that 
made him hate the Ash-i-ka-ga and spend his all to 
give the Mi-ka-do his rights in the rule of his folks. 
Though at first he was on good terms with Sho-gun 
rule, he got in a feud with the man he put in that 
post at Ki-o-to, and when he had held sway for six 
years or so, No-bun-a-ga drove him off, and broke 
up the might of the Ash-i-ka-ga house, though it 
had held the realm in its grasp for near a hun-dred 
and fif-ty years. Then for two-score years Ja-pan 
had no Sho-gun, for this great son of Ki-o Mo-ri's 
line, though the chief man of the realm^, could not 
trace his birth to the Gen race,^and no one else 
could be the Great Sho-gun. But he had charge 
of the troops, and held the post in all but name. 

With the aid of his right-hand men — four great 
gen-er-als whose names rose to fame in more ways 
than one — he brought large tracts of the realm, which 
still held off from the Mi-ka-do's rule, to own his 
sway. Like Yo-ri-to-mo he had great skill and 
force of will on the field ; but he could not bring the 
chief clans to bow to him nor could he hold in peace 
those whom he had won in war as Yo-ri-to-mo did. 
Still he was a great man, and his name wall live 
with the Jap-a-nese through all time. 

But he has more fame as a man who could rule 
like a king, who could set up and pull down Sho- 



The Ashikaga Age. 143 

guns, and drive out a race which had held sway 
for hun-dreds of years, than as a great chief in 
the clan-fights. He did one more work, more great 
than all these and a work for which the Bud-dhists 
in Ja-pan still look on him as their worst foe, as 
one for whom they can not feel too much hate, — 
though their faith ought to teach them not to hate 
at all. 

No-bun-a-ga saw that the whole band of the Bud- 
dhist priests of that day was full of wrong and guilt 
and that most if not all of the priests were false to 
their creeds and their vows ; and he took it on him- 
self to break down the worst sects and purge them 
of their pride and vice, while at the same time he 
took pains to treat well the priests of the faith of 
Christ who came from the West in the same year 
that the name of No-bun-a-ga was first heard through 
the realm. He had been brought up with priests 
when a child, so he did not feel for them the awe 
that most folks had. He had been taught in the 
Shin-to and did not like the Bud-dhists an-y way, 
and so was more quick to see their sins than he 
would have been if he had been taught to feel that 
they could do no wrong. He saw that they were 
not a great cult of pure, good men whose one 
thought was for their faith ; but that they were like 
the rest of men — and worse, some-times. They had 



144 History of Japan. 

rooms full of arms which they could use as well as 
the Sho-gun's troops, and with which they oft left 
desk and shrine to fight in the clan wars. But in 
those times of such great strife, they might have 
done this and done well if their thoughts had been 
for their books and their faith when they were at 
home ; but in place of that they made their faith a 
cloak for an-y thing they might want to do — and 
they grew to want to do all that an-y men did, and 
a great deal that some men would not do. Their 
chief place was on Lake Bi-wa, and there this sort 
of life was at its worst, and when the priests were 
not at grand rites or in their rooms at feasts and 
wines and all sorts of *' good times," they were deep 
in schemes to make them-selves more great in the 
eyes of the folks and to foil the plans of No-bun- 
a-ga. In turn for this, he made up his mind to 
wipe them out. Of course he did not make an-y 
talk of this till he felt that the time had come to 
act. Then with his vast ranks he camped near the 
shore of the Lake and told his chiefs to set fire to 
the great town-like cas-tle of the monks. The 
chiefs heard this with awe. Since the year 800 
this grand old place had stood, and it was thought 
to be the home of some of the best men in the 
world ; it was the strong-hold of the whole realm 
a-gainst the Prince of Wrong. At first they did not 



The Ashikaga Age. 



H5 



think their chief could mean what he said, but he 

told them of how he had rid the realm of thieves ; 

had run an-y risk to his life lor the sake of his lord 

on the throne at Ki-o-to, that he might at last bring 

peace to the land; 

he told them that 

he had learnt that 

there was no worse 

ill in the land than 

this great seat of 

the Bud-dhists, 

which for the same 

cause that he had 

fought the rest of 

his fights, he now 

bade them send 

up in flames. Then 

he told them what 

he knew of the 

aims and the lives 

of the priests. So, 

at his word, his 

men went on to 

burn shrines and homes, and to ply sword, 

lance and dart to all who dwelt with-in those walls. 

Old men and babes, dames, maids and priests all 

met with the same fate. At last it was done. The 




AC-RO-BATS. 



146 History of Japan. 

great Mon-as-ter-y of Hi-ye-zan was no more. No- 
bun-a-ra's first blow at Bud-dhism fell with a force 
that crushed all in its way. This made the rest of 
the priests dread and hate him more than they had 
in times past. But for all that he kept his place at 
the head of the realm and grew more great and 
strong all the while. Nine years from the time the 
Mon-as-ter-y on Lake Bi-wa was burnt, two of the 
Bud-dhist sects whose views were not just the same, 
got in a sort of feud, a-nd made so much talk that the 
Mi-ka-do was told of it, and word was sent out that 
No-bun-a-ga should hear the rest of their talk and 
should be their judge. This was done and an end 
was put to the feud and to one of the sects, whose 
views it was thous^ht would do harm to the State. 
For twelve years one of the chief seats of No- 
bun-a-ga's Bud-dhist foes was the great Mon-as-ter-y 
of O-za-ka. Their feud with him was that he let the 
Cath-o-lics come in from the West and build up their 
shrines and spread their faith. These Bud-dhists 
made their home a place where the foes of the great 
chief could hide from him, and there plots to thwart 
him were laid. No-bun-a-ga knew all this, but he 
was a man who could bide his time with his foes — 
and at last his time came. One day, when his troops 
were out near this great fort of the monks, some of his 
best men were slain by a band of what the Jap-a-nese 



The Ashikaga Age. 147 

call "grass-reb-els" (that is, men who watch for and 
shoot at their foes while they hide them-selves by some 
bush or tree). As soon as they had shot their darts 
they fled to the fort of the monks. At this he set 
out with a will to serve this strong-hold of the Bud- 
dhists as he had done that on Lake Bi-wa. He laid 
siege to it ; some tried to fly and wer.e slain ; post 
on post had to give up to the troops of the great 
chief; and scores of men, wom-en and babes were 
put to death. At last the Mi-ka-do, in grief that so 
much blood was shed, sent three of his men from 
Court and a Bud-dhist priest of a sect at Ki-o-to, 
to beg them to yield, which they did. No-bun- 
a-ga's foes gave up their fort, with all their shrines, 
their homes, and the things that were dear to them, 
in-to his hands. From then till now it has been held 
by the State. The chief said he would spare those 
who still lived ; the priests were to live with oth-er 
monks of their sect, but their might and pride was 
gone; and at no time since has the faith been so 
strong as it was ere this great siege. More than 
once since then the Mi-ka-dos have had to take 
steps to check them when they bore too high a hand ; 
but it was not a hard task, for the faith nev-er got 
o-ver the blows dealt to it by No-bun-a-ga. 

Now the prince, in his zeal to rid Ja-pan of these 
old sects that had grown to be a curse to her, gave 



148 History of Japan. 

the aid of his good will to some priests of the Church 
of Christ, who came from far-off Por-tu-gal, to bring, 
as they said, a new faith to the Jap-a-nese, but who, 
in truth, did naught but bring them a new bane. 

They had come in the wake of some sea-men of 
Por-tu-gal, who had a taste that led them to cruise 
in strange seas, and were cast by storms on the shores 
of some of the south isles of Ja-pan. This was in 
the first days of No-bun-a-ga's fame, and near the 
same time that the folks of Spain got their foot-hold 
in our own land, which, like Ja-pan, was then new 
to all Eu-rope. The Dai-mi-o on whose coast these 
men were cast, sent word for them to go and see 
him (which they did) and he used them well. He 
gave them the means to go to Go-a, which was the 
chief town of the Por-tu-guese states in In-di-a, and he 
.got them to say that each year they would send him 
a ship full of such goods as would sell in his towns. 
This they did, and once, when one of these ships lay 
in port, An-ji-ro, a Jap-a-nese of Sat-su-ma, who had 
slain a man, fled to it to hide, and was borne off to 
Go-a. There he met the gfreat saint of the Church 
of Rome, Fran-cis Xav-i-er, whom the king of Por- 
tu-gal had sent to his lands in In-di-a to spread the 
faith there.. From him An-ji-ro heard of Christ. 
Ere long he took the new faith in place of his own, 
and came to be so well-learnt in all that was taught 



The Ashikaga Age. 14Q 

in it, that the great priest would have him help to 
spread it in his own land. So, with a few more men, 
they went to Ja-pan and set to work in Sat-su-ma in 
1549, — ^he year in which No-bun-a-ga fell heir 
to the lands of his sire. From there they went on 
and though in some fiefs they met with kind words 
and crowds to give ear while An-ji-ro told them 
what the great priest said, and in some they found 
most of the . folks cold to them ; still they kept 
on, and not a few of those who heard them were bap- 
tized. At last Xav-i-er lost heart. When in Ki-o-to 
he found that war and trade were the two o^reat 
thoughts of the folks, and that he could find no 
chance to see the Mi-ka-do or the Great Sho-oun. 
He made up his mind to give up his work there, 
but he left the seeds of the new faith in more than 
one soul, who took up the task of the Saint. In 
five years from the time Xav-i-er left Ki-o-to, there 
were six of their church-es in or near Ki-o-to it-self, 
and scores of them had sprung up in the South-west. 
At the time of No-bun-a-ra's death more than a hun- 
dred thou-sand Jap-a-nese, of all castes, had come to 
be Cath-o-lics, and there were two hun-dred of their 
church-es in the realm. The Por-tu-guese brought 
some-thing more than a new faith to the Realm of 
Isles. It was they (and on their first trip, too), who 
brought the first guns and pow-der that the Jap-a- 



1 50 History of Japan. 

nese had seen, and taught them how to make the 
fire-arms which in a few years were used a great 
deal through the whole realm. To this day there 
are not a few folks in the realm who think that Chris- 
ti-an-i-ty and guns mean much the same thing ; and 
link with both the thoughts of a world of grief and 
ills that they brought. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



HI-DE-YOSH-I, OR THE AGE OF THE TAI-KO. 

No-BUN-A-GA had four chiefs who were most as 
great as him-self, and who, with him, rank as some 
of the best men-at-arms Ja-pan has had. The first 
of these was Hi-de-yosh-i. The folks of his day 
gave him the nick-name of " Cot-ton," for he could 
do so ma-ny things, and cot-ton, you know, can be 
used in a long list of ways. Then there was 
Go-ro-za, to whom the folks gave the name of 
'' Rice," for the great chief of the realm could no 
more do with-out this bold man than they could live 
with-out rice. Shi-ba-ta was known as '' At-tack," 
since he had great pluck and skill to drive down 



Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 1 5 1 

hard on the foe. And as I-ke-da could draw his 
force off the field so well that they scarce knew when 
he was on the weak side of a fight, he had the name 
of '' Re-treat." 

In time there came to be a fifth chief in No-bun- 
a-ga's ranks, who was more great than all but the 
first. He was I-ye-yas-u, and that name, with those 
of No-bun-a-ga and Hi-de-yosh-i, we are told, 
stand first in all the list of Ja- pan's great 
men. 

Hi-de-yosh-i, the first to take the place of his great 
chief in the realm, was born of farm-folk, but he 
did not go out at morn with grass-hook in hand and 
bas-ket on back to cut grass for the live-stock all day, 
nor did he hoe the weeds in the wet rice-fields ; but 
he made the streets his school, his work-shop, and 
his play-ground. His wits were keen. He was quick 
and had no fear of an-y thing or an-y one, and there 
he learnt the ways of men and grew sharp and 
shrewd. While yet quite a small lad, he went to 
be a groom to the brave young chief, No-bun-a-ga, 
who knew the men that took care of his steeds as 
well as those who rode as his staff. He thought he 
saw signs of great gifts in this small, mon-key-like 
face, and bright eyes that could not keep still. So 
one day he told him that he ought to bear arms and 
learn to fight, and some day he might lead in great 



152 History of Japan. 

wars. So the small street boy went in-to the ranks 
of the realm, and rose from post to post till he was 
a gen-er-al. He was still young, but he bore him- 
self so well that when he was thir-ty years old he 
was made a prem-ier or chief of first rank. Of course 
there were not a few in the troops and in the State 
who soon made them-selves his foes ; for in a land 
like Ja-pan, where rank is of such great note, few 
like to see a man sprung from plain farm-folk reach 
such a height as this. But Hi-de-yosh-i's foes could 
not do much to hurt him. To show their spleen 
they, said he was a "Crowned Mon-key," but he 
bore the crown of his might and fame with worth 
and pride. His rise was a strange thing to more 
than his foes, for none but lords of the Fu-ji-wa-ra 
blood took this high place ; but he got the right to 
it some way through brave deeds and work, craft 
and wit, push and will ; and the Em-per-or gave him 
the right to found a house of his own, which is 
known as the Toy-o-to-mi. As was the way with 
Jap-a-nese, he had had three or four names in the 
course of his life ere this ; but now he took that of 
Toy-o-to-mi Hi-de-yosh-i, by which he is best known 
in his-to-ry. We are told that he was a man of war 
from his youth up. His troops were fond of him, 
for he bore him-self like a true knio^ht. Where 
was seen his flae there men were sure was the 



Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 



153. 



thick of the fray, and the worst of it for his foes. 
This flag had one gourd on it at first, but as a new 
one was put for each fight won by the knight, it 
soon had a large bunch of them. 




A WED-DING. 



On the death of his chief, No-bun-a-ga, Hi-de- 
yosh-i went at once to the town where the man who 
had put No-bun-a-ga to death had set him-self up 
in his lord's place, and slew him. He was now 



154 Histoi'y of Japan. 

more great than an-y man in Ja-pan. A hard fight 
was made for one of No-bun-a-ga's sons to keep 
him out of the first place in the realm. But it was 
in vain, in the end ; and at last this '' mon-key 
face " boy from the farms of O-wa-ri went back to 
Ki-o-to the head man of the realm. 

For years he gave him-self up to toil of all kinds 
for the good of the land, — and much he did for it, 
too, both in a way to make the soil bring forth more 
than it had done in times past, and to put more 
sway in the hands of the Em-per-or. 

To keep his men-at-arms at work in times of 
peace, he built most grand pal-a-ces at Ki-o-to, and 
did a great deal in more ways than one to make 
that fine old town more grand than it had been ere 
he came. He paved the bed of the stream Ka-mo 
Avith broad, flat stones, and tried to make the place 
great as a port as well as in all ways else. Nor did 
he do these things in no place but Ki-o-to. His 
gifts for the arts of peace were more great than for 
war, and the whole realm was made to feel them. 
He chose the site of the old monks' fort at O-za-ka for 
a fine new town, which he laid out on a large scale, 
built walls round it, and made a vast fort there and 
a pal-ace where the Mi-ka-do and not a few great 
men dwelt in af-ter years. Then he had the bed of 
the stream which flows by it made more broad and 



Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 155 

more deep, and dug scores of can-als, and made the 
way clear for the town to be a great place for trade 
in years to come. You may some-times hear folks 
call this town the Ven-ice of Ja-pan. 

In those days the post of Na-ga-sa-ki was a place 
of much note in trade, and for that cause Hi-de- 
yosh-i took it from the Dai-mi-o and put it in the 
hands of the crown. His whole life now was spent 
to serve his great lord. For this cause he spared 
him-self no toil to make the folks do their best in all 
things they put their hands to. At no time, ere then 
or since, has Ja-pan made such boats as were then 
built ; at no time has she had such large trade in so 
ma-ny things as she then had. Her men went far 
and wide on the high seas, as you could not think 
they had ev-er done if you knew them now. Their 
ships were twice or thrice the size and of much more 
fine build than the junks that now hug their shores 
or ply their way to Chi-na or Co-re-a. The ships of 
the great Co-lum-bus were not so large ; and they 
could sail as well and as fast as the craft of the 
Dutch and the Por-tu-guese, which won world-wide 
lame in that same age. The Jap-a-nese knew how 
to sail them, too ; and went in them to the lands 
of the South and South-west, to the Ma-lay Ar-chi- 
pel-a-go and the Ku-ril-es on the North. In 
more than one of these lands you can still find folks 



156 History of Japan. 

whose sires were Jap-a-nese sea-men. It was 
in the time of peace, more than in his wars, that 
Hi-de-yosh-i's best gifts came out. When he 
had once won his high place in the realm, all his 
work and thoughts were for the best good of the 
State and its true head. For this he would not rest 
in times of peace, as most men-at-arms, but toiled 
as hard to build up towns, to push on trade, to 
make new plans by which to bring a more large 
and sure tax in to the Em-per-or. While he thus 
held the reins of the realm with so strong a grasp, 
he made the folks, both high and low, like him and 
look up to him ; for he was a man whose aim was to 
be fair and just to all, and in this rank, name, race or 
deeds done to him-self, did not move him. He was 
frank and free to be friends with those who had fought 
him, and did not put his foes to death when he had 
won in a fray with them, as had been the way of 
No-bun-a-ga. The brave chief I-ye-yas-u at first 
bore him ill-will for the high rank he had got ; for 
he felt that he should have had the great No-bun- 
a-ga's place ; but Hi-de-yosh-i got him to come to 
Ki-o-to at last to pay his court to the Mi-ka-do, -and 
ere long he had made him his friend once more ; and 
I-ye-yas-u took Hi-de-yosh-i's sister for his wife. 

In the year 1591 he gave up his high post of Ku- 
am-ba-ku to put his son in his place, and from that 



Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 157 

time on he was known as ''The Tai-ko." His son 
was but a child, and he made this change to make 
sure that the rule of the realm should be kept in his 
own race ; but as long as he lived he kept his grasp 
on the realm just the same, and the whole time from 
No-bun-a-ga's death to his own, is known as the 
'Age of the Tai-ko" — the pride of Jap-a-nese his- 
to-ry. Like his old chief, Hi-de-yosh-i felt that the 
streno^th of the Bud-dhists was a source of dread to 
the state, so he went on in the work of No-bun-a-ga 
to take it from them. He broke up the great Mon- 
as-ter-y of Ku-ma-no, whose priests laid claim to a 
large fief which brought them much wealth. But 
the Tai-ko was no friend to the new faith brought 
from the West by Xav-i-er and the priests of Rome. 
He saw that these deep men, and some of the 
Jap-a-nese whom they won to their creed, took care 
to rain the o^ood-will of the o^reat folks of the realm 
as much as to spread their faith. He saw, too, 
that where they had. a hold in a town, or an-y part 
of a fief, there might be seen a change in the way 
the folks felt as to the rule of the realm ; and in more 
than one case, he saw signs of priest-craft that bode 
no good to the State of Ja-pan. He found that the 
priests won their way a great deal by much show and 
a free use of gold, which the kings of Spain and 
Por-tu-gal gave them for "alms." He saw that some 



158 History of Japan. 

of them took pains, by false means and fair, to make 
the folks look down on the Bud-dhists so that they 
would be the more quick to take the new faith. He 
found that the priests were all ruled by their Pope, 
a sort of church king, whose word was law, and who 
was held up as a man who must be right in all 
things. He wore a trip-le crown, the Tai-ko learnt, 
and in the name of his God, set up or threw down 
thrones, took the crown from the head of one prince 
to put it on some one's else, cut the realms of Eu- 
rope in parts to give them to his friends, and as far 
off as in the New World seemed to have the might 
to give lands to whom he chose. 

''This man's priests," said Hi-de-yosh-i to him- 
self, "may want to give him Ja-pan to deal with in 
the same way. They have sects of some size now 
on our coast, and they have a church in our chief 
town." No-bun-a-ga had been their friend, but he 
felt sure that they were not the friends of the Jap- 
a-nese State, and ere long he found that he was in 
the midst of a dark plot they had laid round his 
son — the heir to the Ku-am-ba-ku — in his own house. 
He told this to his friend and chief-at-arms, I-ye- 
yas-u, in whom he had put more than one great trust 
ere this. I-ye-yas-u set to work at once to find out 
if there were grounds for his lord's fears. He found 
that three of the Dai-mi-os — each of whom was lord 



Hideyoshi, 07^ the Age of the Taiko. 



159 



of a large fief — had sent word to the Pope that they 
threw them-selves at his feet, and felt that he must 
be their great lord, as he was the one man in the 
world who stood for the God of Earth. 

The Tai-ko did not need to know more than this 




TEA AF-TER THE BATH. 



to prove that there was good cause lor his worst 
fears, and he made up his mind at once to cut all the 
strings that ran from Ja-pan to this far-off Pope for 
good and all. But he took time to act, so that he 
could make his stroke tell all the more when it fell. 



1 60 Histoiy of Japan. 

He took near a year to lay his plans for the great 
blow he thought to strike. At length in June, 1587, 
his troops were at their posts in the fiefs of Ki-u- 
shi-u, and the South coasts of the realm (in the lands 
of the false prin-ces), and there were such hosts of 
them that they could quell an-y who might try to beat 
them back. At last the day came for him to give 
the sign, and from end to end the realm rang with 
the word of the great Tai-ko, that in the name of the 
Mi-ka-do, Ghris-ti-an-i-ty must be put down in six 
months, its priests from strange lands must leave 
Ja-pan at once and for all time, on pain of death ; 
its schools must be shut ; its church-es torn down ; 
no cross or way-side shrine should be left to stand 
in an-y part of the realm ; and all Jap-a-nese who 
bore the faith of Christ must give it up. The 
men of the West of course, had to leave, and at first the 
Jap-a-nese priests fell back, and the Church of Rome 
seemed to have had a great check in the land ; but 
the work went on in a still way just the same, and 
thou-sands of Jap-a-nese took the name of Christ 
each year. Ere long the priests threw off this cloak 
and came forth once more in their robes, and taught in 
the streets as they had done at first. Then the Tai-ko 
bade them leave, and not a few Chris-tians were put 
to death ; but it was left till the time of the next 
rul-er to drive them quite out of the realm. 



Hidcyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. i6i 

Hi-de-yosh-i gave up his war on the Chris-tians 
for the sake of a long-dreamt-of plan to bring the 
lands to the West of Ja-pan in-to the Mi-ka-do's 
em-pire. Once, when he had some words with the 
Chi-nese Em-per-or, he made the boast that he was 
the King of Nip-pon and king of him-self and he 
should know how if he chose to do so, to make the 
Em-per-or of Chi-na bow to his yoke. Five years 
went by ere he set out to make his threat good. 
Then he sent a call to his lords and their clans to 
take up arms and form ranks for a vast host that 
he would send to the coast of Co-re-a, which, though 
then at peace with Ja-pan, did not pay her court to 
the Son of Heav-en as she should. It had been 
his chief aim from the time he was a boy, to make 
Co-re-a — if not Chi-na, too — a part of the Jap-a-nese 
Em-pire. He had tried to get No-bun-a-ga to let 
him do this when he was a young man, and though 
his chief had heard the plan with a laugh, Hi-de- 
yosh-i still kept his mind on it. In their last weak 
years the Ash-i-ka-ga had let Co-re-a cease to send 
her gifts and pay her court to the Mi-ka-do, as she 
was bound to do by the terms Yo-i-to-mo made 
with her king ; and the sea-thieves that were so 
thick on the coasts would scarce let an-y trade be 
kept up. This was a state of things that the Tai-ko 
could not brook in the land he thought should be 



1 62 History of Japan. 

to the Mi-ka-do like a part of Ja-pan. Ere he made 
up his mind for the war, he sent two bands of men 
to Co-re-a to ask in the Mi-ka-do's name the gifts due 
him. The first band did not get there, but the 
next one did. Then, the Tai-ko heard from some 
Chi-nese who came to dwell in Ja-pan, that their 
own realm was in a state of much strife and bad 
home-war, and he sent word to the Em-per-or of 
the Ce-lest-ial Em-pire (as the Chi-nese call their 
realm), to say that if he would not give ear to 
Hi-de-yosh-i's plan to have Chi-na pay court to the 
Mi-ka-do, that the Jap-a-nese hosts would march 
on him. 

What at last brought the great chief to the point 
of war, shows how grand was the stuff he was made 
of. He lost a child for whom he had great love, 
and his grief was deep and strong. Though, as 
as was the way in those times, he had eight or ten 
wives, he had few chil-dren, and when this one died 
he could do naught but mourn for months. One 
day he went off to a shrine, where he sat for a long 
time, lost in his sad thoughts, while his eyes were 
bent on the sky of the West, in front of which rose 
the far-off hills. All at once he cried out, " A 
great man ought to use his troops in the lands of 
the West, and not give way to grief;" and with that 
he went back to his home, sent a call to his chiefs, 



Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 16 



o 



told them that they must aid him to make Chi-na 
bow to the Mi-ka-do's throne, and at the same time 
win lands and wealth and fame for them-selves. 
They all fell in with his plan and ere long a fleet of 
junks set sail for the land of Co-re-a, which they 
were to take first. Hi-de-yosh-i had laid out all his 
plans, and told his chiefs and his rank and file just what 
to do. It was a grief to him and to them that he was 
now too old to lead them him-self. They had had signs 
from the gods that bade them be of good cheer and 
they should win their cause in the great, strange 
lands of the West. They made a clean sweep in 
the first part of their march through the land, and 
the king had to flee and leave his town in their 
hands. When calls were sent to Chi-na for help, a 
great tide soon set in that drove them back at once ; 
but the Tai-ko had thought of this and had a large 
fresh force made up to send on in case of need, and 
as soon as the news got to him, the new ranks went 
out and the plan to push on in-to China was to be 
put through with great force, when the Tai-ko fell 
sick and died. So, a truce was made. More lives 
than we could count were lost in Co-re-a for no just 
cause, and so great a drain had been put on Ja-pan 
that not a few of the poor folks at home lost heart for 
work, and sold them-selves to the men who came 
from Spain and Por-tu-gal, for slaves. 



164 History of Japan. 

So this last act of the great Hi-de-yosh-i's Hfe was 
a blot on his name. It was the cause of no 
end of grief and pain and loss to the folks for the 
eood of whose realm he had done so much to rain. 
But the Jap-a-nese do not blame him much for this. 
Not a few of them feel yet that Co-re-a is theirs by 
right and that it was meet she should have been 
shown her place and the might of her Em-per-or, the 
xMi-ka-do. 

Both of these great schemes, like his acts to the 
Chris-tians, seem to have been laid out by long 
years of thought, and with the view that they should 
help him to gain the great aim of his life, which was 
to crush the strength of the clan-chiefs and put the 
realm in the sole sway of the Mi-ka-do — a state of 
things which Ja-pan has but just got to in our own 
age. But he did a great deal to bind the fiefs 
to the throne, and his last wish was that the 
clans would drop their feuds, blend their aims and 
give their strength to the best good of the realm as 
a whole. 

The Jap-a-nese have much cause to think well of 
the low-born Hi-de-yosh-i ; and it is with pride that 
the men of to-day look back on the things that he 
did which made the " Age of the Tai-ko," like that 
of E-liz-a-beth of En-gland, the best their realm 
has known. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE LONG PEACE. 



From the time of I-ye-yas-u, Ja-pan kept her 
doors closed to all the world for two cent-u-ries and 
a half, till the tact of our own Com-mo-dore Per-ry 
broke the seal in 1853, and got her to make terms 
of trade and good-will with the U-nit-ed States. 

A few Dutch-men were let to stay on the small 
isle of De-si-ma, and to have a ship go to them 
once a year from the Dutch East In-dies ; but no 
one could come on it to stay, nor could an-y one 
leave by it ; and the isle was quite shut off from the 
main land, with which the Dutch could have naught 
to do. No oth-er ships could touch at a Jap-a-nese 
port for an-y cause ; and it was a hard task for a 
Jap-a-nese sea-man cast on the shore of a strange 
land to o;et back to his home. 

In the mean-time the Sho-gun, in his fort-like 
cas-tle at Yed-do, with its vast guards, was the real 
head of the Em-pire, while the Mi-ka-do had no 
guard to awe the realm, but dwelt in his plain home. 



1 66 History of Japan. 

to found a great town — a site which Hi-de-yosh-i 
had shown him as the best place for the seat of the 
Ku-an-to. In the few odd times that he was not 
in the field — for war is the one word that tells what 
those davs were — he was at work in his town, in the 
time of both his chiefs. He took but small part, if 
an-y, in the plan to put the yoke of Ja-pan on the 
Em-per-or of Chi-na ; and he was at Yed-do when 
he heard that the Tai-ko was sick, and went to him 
at once. He was by his bed when he died, and 
swore to take care of his son and to do all he 
could to have him take the place of his sire. But 
few folks thought that this child was the Tai-ko's 
son, and, more than that, there were not a few who 
felt that Hi-de-yosh-i had had no right to rule them 
( '* The up-start," they said, '' who was naught but a 
low-born clod and a groom " ). They had borne his 
sway, since they could not help it, but they were up. 
in arms at the plan that his son — if he were his 
son — should take his place. Not a few thought 
that I-ye-yas-u had his own eyes on the post ; and 
then when the hosts came back from Co-re-a, it was 
not strange that a home war should have come up, 
since some of the chiefs had not been on good 
terms while off in the West, and not a few had 
cast their own eyes in the way of the Tai-ko's place. 
War did not break out all at once, but the feuds 



lyeyasic and the House of Tokugawa, 167 

and the small fights, and the want of trust in I-ye- 

yas-u grew till at 

last it was a plain 

fact that his foes 

were at work to 

land a large force 

and put him down; 

while he, for his 

own part, had his 

troops, and his 

friends had theirs 

in fine trim to meet . 

them an-y time they / 

chose to come out. ,^. 

They came , 

long, and in 

great fight on 

plains of Se-ki-ea- ,^. 

ha-ra, not tar from '^^^ 

Lake Bi-wa, the 

Gen prince won the "% 

day. So great a 

fight and one so 

sure in its ends 

Ja-pan has not seen 

ere that or since. 

It was long and hard, but I-ye-yas-u and his men 




ere)j^ 
th^ ^v 
the f 



A GOV-ERN-OR 



i68 History of Japan. 

would take no rest when it was done till they had 
got hold of all the chief points in the realm and the 
whole of Ja-pan was in their hands. The two cent- 
u-ries of war and strife in the realm were now at an 
end, and a new age of peace was come which was 
to last for two hun-dred and fif-ty years. 

Now, both of the chiefs whom I-ye-yas-u had 
served had been men who could not trace their 
blood to the Gen race, and so they could not hold 
the post of Great Sho-gun ; but he was sprung from 
that grand old stock ; the blood of the Mi-ka-dos, 
of Nit-ta, and more than one of the chiefs who had 
brought East Ja-pan to bow to the throne was in 
his veins, and he had the force and the chance to 
make his name out-shine all his sires. The Em- 
per-or, sick at heart of the strife that had held sway 
in his realm so long, now had one great wish — that 
was, peace. In I-ye-yas-u he saw one who had won 
such a high place m the minds of all the Jap-a-nese 
by the way he had fought on the field of Se-ki-ga- 
ha-ra, by the fine state in which he could make up 
and keep his troops, and by his skill found and build 
a great town, that he felt him to be the one man in 
the realm who could bring back peace, hold the feuds 
in check and start the folks to work and trade once 
more. So the realm had a new Great Sho-gun 
and the house of To-ku-ga-wa be-gan a rule of more. 



lyeyaszc and the House of Tokugawa. ^ 169 

than two hun-dred and fif-ty years ; for the race of 
I-ye-yas-u held its post till a few years a-go, when 
the great change of 1868 came to the realm, and an 
end was put to the Sho-gun rule for the rest of time. 
When I-ye-yas-u found him-self the lord of most 
all Ja-pan (though in name, you know, he was a 
sub-ject of the Mi-ka-do ; and in rank, though not in 
strength, the Ku-ge, or lords of the court, were born 
more high than he), his first thought was to fix 
thino^s with the chiefs and the clans who held lands 
and had large bands of men m their train, so that 
there would be peace on all sides — a peace that 
should be sound and sure, and have its root in his 
own hold on them. It took great skill and much 
thought to do this, for the whole realm, as we know, 
was cut up in fiefs, which were in the hands of 
Dai-mi-OS, each of whom had the sway of a king in 
his own lands, and by tax drew from them large 
funds. For the most part each fief had been held 
by the same race of folks for a long time ; and so 
each chief was the head of a large house, with a 
great deal of pride and rights and small feuds 
and all such thinors which are most hard to smooth 
down. Then, too, the Sho-gun was a man who was 
one of them-selves till he won the chief post in the 
realm by his might at arms. Now he would put 
on airs and turn them out, too ; for he had a large 



I 70 History of Japan. 

house of his own to look out for and must make 
more than one change in these fiefs so as to get each 
of his own sons in a place oi wealth and note and 
might, in case an-y one should try to raise a 
force to break down his sway. But I-ye-yas-u had 
a great deal of tact and, ere long, he had set all this 
right, and was on good terms with the Dai-mi-os, 
too. He first made it known that he would grant 
to all who had been his foes in the past, terms of 
good-will if they would have them. That is what 
we call an am-nes-ty. He sent forth word that he 
would like the past to be put out of mind, for it 
was a grief to him that so much blood had been 
shed ; and now he would like to see all the clans m 
the realm on the best of terms. By such words as 
these and by more than one good turn to his late 
foes, it soon came round that most ot the clans were 
soon on good terms with hmi. He did not try to 
force those that still held off; for he thought they 
would do like the rest in time if he let them be ; 
but he took good care to fix them so that they could 
do him no harm ; no two clans of foes were left 
side by side ; and in more wa3^s than one he cut off 
all chance for them to join in a large band to bring 
more strife with him. 

Then to cut off one more great source of war m 
the past : he made up a guard for Ki-o-to, so that no 



lyeyasiL and tJic Hoitse of Tokugawa. 171 

one could seize the Mi-ka-do. With both of these 
things done he feh sure of his hold on the realm, 
and could turn his thoughts to works that should 
make that hold so strong that it would last for cent- 
u-ries. One of the first of these to claim his time 
was the new town of Yed-do, to which he brought a 
vast host of work-men to make thecas-tle more large, 
to dig moats and can-als, to grade streets, fill in the 
marsh lands, and to build. Fleets of junks brought 
stone from Hi-o-go for the walls of the fort, and for 
the gate-ways of the town. These he set up, far out- 
side of what most folks thought would be the bounds 
of the town ; but I-ye-yas-u fore-saw how it would 
o^row. He had a o^reat moat duQ^ that went round 
both fort and town, and left much room to spare ; 
and great gate tow-ers were set up, though no wall 
was as yet built to make them of an-y use ; and the 
folks had to take such a long walk out in the fields 
to see them, that they would laugh at them. The 
Sho-gun said the. time would come when walls 
would be built, and that they would be too small for 
the town. His word came true, and in two-score 
years the lands on the East side of the stream were 
built up. 

And the great I-ye-yas-u had plans and works to 
be done for more than this fair town of his. He 
built up new and made sound the old torts of the 



172 History of Japan. 

Ku-an-to land till it had from ten to a score of fine, 
stout cas-tles. He seemed to know what would be 
the growth and the needs of the Em-pire in the years 
to come, and not a few of his plans were the means 
that brought that growth. One thing he did was 
to build fine roads through the realm, one of the 
best of which is the To-kai-do, a broad way that still 
skirts the East-ern Sea and runs from Ki-o-to to 
Yed-do, or To-ki-o, as they now call it. He set up 
near three-score posts on these roads, each with a 
good house, where folks could stay at night, where 
they could change or hire steeds to take their goods, 
or slaves — known as cool-ies — -to bear their packs or 
the '' pal-an-quins" — which are small cars that all 
folks of note in Ja-pan used to ride in from place to 
place. The old roads, too, had a great deal done to 
them ; and there was scarce a pass through the hills, 
a bridge, or a foot-path of much use, that he did not 
have put in good shape, while all the points where 
folks had to cross streams by boat — and this has to 
be done a great deal in Ja-pan — he made to have a 
broad place to land the boats at both ends of the 
routes. Now all this was a vast deal of work, and 
it was work of great note, and good, too ; for in those 
days the lords of the court and the chiefs of the fiefs, 
with great bands of their men, had to go from place 
to place a great deal since they were made by law to 



Iyeyas7i and the Hotise of Tokujawa. 



^Ili 



dwell in some of the chief towns for a part of each year. 
The Sho-gun had quite a long code of rules laid down, 
which these men had to go by when they took these 
trips ; for Ja-pan is a great land for rules and laws on 
how the folks shall act at all times — what we call et-i- 
quette. I-ye-yas-u made ma-ny laws, from those on 




NIGHT PO-LICE. 



small things that have no place but in the house, to 
the large ones of the clans ; and they were laws that 
spread till they went in-tg force through the whole 
realm. 

But twice were there breaks in the sweet peace of 
this great Sho-gun's rule. Wben the Tai-ko died the 



1 74 History of Japan. 

Chris-tians had thought they would be free from the 
ban that had been put on them, since they had a 
good friend in his son ; but the fight at Se-ki-ga-ha-ra 
put quite a new face on things, for I-ye-yas-u had 
seen too deep in their ways in Hi-de-yosh-i's time 
to want them to go on with their work in Ja-pan, 
and now the Dai-mi-os of the fiefs gave them some 
of the same sort of terms they, in times past, had 
thought meet to use on the Bud-dhists they had 
forced to take the faith of Christ. The Jap-a-nese 
Chris-tians were told to give up their new creeds, 
but they would not; and at last they took up arms 
in their cause. Such a thing as the farm folks 
armed to fight their own cause was so new in Ja- 
pan that I-ye-yas-u felt sure that the priests were at 
the root of it. He would not have been quite so 
sure if he had not known that the priests paid their 
court to the Tai-ko's son as if he held the place his 
sire had left him. The Sho-gun's next step was to 
send forth word that all Chris-tians should give up 
their faith; but the priests and folks soon went on in 
the old way, and kept up their work to bring more 
to join the church all the time. This was the way 
it had been in Hi-de-yosh-i's day, but I-ye-yas-u had 
set out to make the work sure this time. But he 
was not in too great haste. On the watch for all 
the craft and plans of the priests, his men one day 



lyeyasti and the House of Toktigawa. 1 75 

found a chest in a deep well, and in it a vast hoard 
of gold, with a roll that gave sure proof of a plot he 
had long known some-thing of. He found in this 
that plans had been laid to make the prince of one 
of the fiefs king of Ja-pan, and to yoke the realm to 
one of the em-pires of Eu-rope. On this, the Sho- 
o^un lost no time to make clean w^ork of his task. 
He sent all folks not born in Ja-pan from its shores 
at once, and said that all Jap-a-nese must give up 
the faith of Christ or leave the land. This was in 
the year 1611, and in a few years more he had a 
short strife with the son of the Tai-ko, and then 
Ja-pan was free from war for a long time. Hi-de- 
yosh-i's son, though put down in fair fight, still had 
some thoughts for the place of his sire, and with 
some Jes-u-it priests, and others, who did not like 
the Great Sho-gun, was at the head of a band bound 
to do him ill. I-ye-yas-u found this out, and in a 
short time he made some cause to march on the 
youth, who was at the cas-tle of O-za-ka, which was 
set on fire. Then a fierce fight took place, in which 
I-ye-yas-u won, and the son of the Tai-ko lost. Then, 
for years and years, the faith of Christ was shut 
out of the realm, and so were all folks of strange lands 
but a few Dutch on the isle of De-si-ma. This was 
the end of blood-shed for more than two hun-dred 
and fif-ty-three years. How sweet that long peace 



I 76 History of Japan. 

was to the poor realm that had had to bear so much 
woe and grief and loss for such a long time ! 

I-ye-yas-u was not like most men who win in all 
the wars they fight. Peace was more dear to him 
than strife ; and the last years of his life were spent 
in the fair cas-tle that he built when he was a young 
man, on the first lands that had been giv-en to him. 
There he gave his time and thoughts to the good of 
the realm — how he could best wipe out the deep 
scars of war that lay on her; how he could best 
bring forth in her the arts of peace, and fix his plan 
of rule so that it should stand for a long, long time. 
When he died he bade his sons rule in ways that 
are both kind and just. The great tales that are 
told of the pomp and state with which this man was 
laid in his tomb, and all the rites that were held at 
his death, show us a good deal of the ways of the 
folks at that time, and how much they thought of the 
grand rites due the dead. 

I-ye-yas-u's son took his place, and seems to have 
kept up the work ot his sire in all his plans. He 
did what the great To-ku-ga-wa would have done 
if he had lived ; and in his time, the strength of 
the Yed-do rule grew more sure with all the clans, 
the forms of rule of the realm were made bet- 
ter, and the fair town of Yed-do grew in size and 
strength and fine looks all the time ; but it was the 



lyeyasu and the Hoiise of Tokugawa. 



177 



grand-son of I-ye-yas-u who next to him ranks as the 
best man of all the new line of Great Sho-guns. 

He it was who 

brought the Sho- 

gun rule and clan- 
strength to their 

height. He made 

the Sho-gun more 

than the chief of the 

Dai-mi-OS, which 

w^as his real place ; 

he made the post in 

its way most a s 

great as that of the 

Mi-ka-do, and ere 

long the Dai-mi-OS 

came to be bound 

to pay court to him 

and to do his will 

as much as if he 

were their Em-per- 

or. He, too, did "'-_______ 

much for Yed-do, Z^-s--J^^ .; ''■'' 

and laid new plans japa-nese ar-mor. 
for her, such as wa-ter-works, look-outs for fire with 
bells to tell by a code of signs where the flames 
had been seen and how far they had got. The gold 





jap-a-nese ar-mor. 



I j'^ History of Japan. 

that had been found in the Isle of Sa-do in I-de- 
yas-u's time, was now made in-to coin at the mints 
set up by his grand-son. A law was made to fix 
weights and meas-ures. For the first time, the realm 
was gone o-ver and maps made of the fiefs and the 
strong-holds of the Dai-mi-os. The great shrines 
which I-ye-yas-u had set out to build, he went on 
with ; and in scores of ways did he start new works 
and plan new ways that have been of vast worth to 
the realm in times past, and are kept up to this day. 
This Sho-gun was the first to use the name of Ty- 
coon. It means some-thmg like, " I am a great man 
and you must think much of what I say." The 
Sho-gun had no right to it, but his pride was 
strong, and one time when he had some Co-re-ans 
come to him, he felt that he must make them feel 
that he was of great note in the land. To the Jap- 
a-nese it did not mean much, though some of them 
came to use it them-selves in the time of the last 
three Sho-guns, when they had a wish to treat their 
lords with gre;at awe. But when the first of them 
used it him-self to our Com-mo-dore Per-ry, it 
made a great time ; it was a large part of the 
cause of the war that soon came on and broke down 
the sway of the Dai-mi-o chief and led to the new 
state of things we now find in the realm. 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE ASH-I-KA-GA AGE 



The race of the Ash-i-ka-ga, whose plots so soon 
broke up the Mi-ka-do's sway, kept hold of the reins 
of the realm for two hun-dred and fif-ty years. Thir- 
teen of its sons were Sho-guns, and in all their time 
you can find but one bright page in the long, sad 
tale of their age, when ill-will was in the air and 
there were fights tor small clan feuds all the time, 
and now and then for great ones, when the whole 
land would be drawn in -to war. 

In the time of the Ho-jo it had been the right of 
the Court to say who should hold the post of Sho- 
gun, and then you know it was the Shik-ken who 
had the Sho-gun in their hands, so that they had no 
might of their own ; but when the Ash-i-ka-ga then 
got the post for their own race and had it go from 
sire to son, the man with the rank was not 
at all times the man who had the sway. Much of 
the resil work of the state was done by smart men, 
not of hio^h rank. One of these, Ho-so-ka-wa Yo-ri- 



1 8o History of -Japafi. 

in the midst of. a park with a fence round it, at the 
far - off Ki-o-to, where lords of the court, priests, 
men of rank and blood, of books and art, let the 
days slip by in home-work and ease. The folks used 
to say, '' The Sho-gun all men fear; the Mi-ka-do 
all men love." 

The Em-per-or him-self was in awe of the To-ku- 
ga-wa Sho-gun. He gave full sway to Bud-dhism, 
for that did not teach folks to think ; but it was a 
crime to take up an-y of the thoughts or plans of 
Eu-rope or the New World. No one could so much 
as build a boat: on the plan of those used in the 
West ; or on an-y plan but that of a Jap-a-nese junk. 
To go out of the realm to see what was done in the 
rest of the world, to learn an-y tongue but those of 
Chi-na and Ja-pan, to have an-y of the ways of the 
Eu-ro-pe-ans, or to hold to the faith of Christ, were 
crimes that naught but death could pay for. When 
the Sho-gun and his train went out, the folks had to 
bow their heads to the earth. He was the real head 
of the Em-pire. Each fief of note was like a small 
realm, whose dai-mi-o was a king with hun-dreds of 
men in his train, but the Sho-gun was their king. 
Such plans as they laid to watch all that was done in 
the realm and keep the folks un-der their thumbs 
have scarce been known an-y where else. The realm 
was full of spies ; no one had trust in an-y one else, 



The Long Peace. 



isl- 



and so all the folks, high and low, came to be far 
more quick to lie than to tell the truth. Most of the 
dai-mi-os who had got their lands from the Sho-guns 
felt that their court was due to him as to a king, and 




STREET MU-SI-CIAN. 



the folks' of the low castes, for the most part, did not 
know that the Mi-ka-do had ev-er had an-y real 
sway in the realm ; they thought him sent from 
Heav-en to be their great high priest, and while they 



1 82 Histo7y of Japan. 

felt all awe for him, they did not feel that they ought 
to serve him as they did the Sho-gun. Most of them 
thought the " great and good house of To-ku-ga-wa " 
had had sole right to rule from the first. The Sho- 
guns knew they had no real claims to all this, but 
they were bound to keep their place; and so, lest the 
folks should come to know the truth, they made it a 
great point to keep them in the dark. They must 
not be taught to read or to think much for fear they 
should find out the past his-to-ry of the land ; and 
as much as could be, the high castes, too, were kept 
from such books. This may have been one cause 
why such a fierce fight was made on the Chris-tians 
and on all folks of strange lands ; they were bound 
to teach the mass of the folks. 

Thus shut in, years went by. They were years 
of peace and of good crops, and not of want. The 
farms brought forth all the food the folks could eat ; 
there was no trade with the rest of the world ; no 
one could mass great wealth ; there were no out-side 
folks to spread new thoughts and plans, and a calm 
lay on the land that was sweet, as peace must be 
when a realm has been long at war. But it was a 
kind of peace that was not for the real good of the 
realm. The Sam-u-rai, who had the sole right to 
wear the sword, were the on-Iy ones who could take 
up more than the most plain stud-ies ; and no two of 



The Long Peace. 183 

them could meet and talk long but that a spy was by 
to hear all that they said. Now, you know, the Jap- 
a-nese had come to be fond of books ; not a few of 
the Sam-u-rai were men who had read and thought 
a great deal ; and no Sho-guns could blind their 
eyes to the truth, nor keep them from the work in 
which they took so much joy. Some of them saw 
through the plans of the To-ku-ga-wa, and chose to 
take up a great task which would show them up at 
last, and in spite of all their pains would tell the 
folks the truth as to their realm. This great task, 
to which some of the chief Sam-u-rai gave their 
lives, was to write the first His-to-ry of Ja-pan. The 
man who took the lead in this was the Prince of 
Mi-to, who lived till the year 1700. He drew round 
him a host of men who had read and thought a 
great deal ; and with their aid made his great work, 
which is near the size of our own Mr. Ban-croft's 
His-to-ry of the U-nit-ed States, but makes two hun- 
dred and for-ty-three of their books. The men 
wrote it in pure Chi-nese, which is still thought to 
be the right tongue in which to write a work of 
great note, just as in times past Eng - lish folks 
thought Lat-in the tongue in which they ought to 
put their best works. 

Now the Prince of Mi-to had great fame for his 
gifts, for he wrote a good deal ; and as he had some 



184 History of Japan. 

ties of blood with the house of To-ku-ga-wa, he was 
more free to state his views than an-y one else in the 
realm. But his views were not for the good of the 
Sho-guns ; he thought they were wrong to do as 
they did, and in his book he led folks to see that the 
Mi-ka-do and no one else had a right to be head of 
the realm, and the Sho-guns from the first had been 
mere thieves who took the might from the throne. 
From the first Mi-to's work was made much of by 
well-learned men, but for more than a hun-dred years 
there were but a few cop-ies of it, and all of them 
were made by hand. Its views spread more and 
more, though; and less than two-score years a-go 
there was such a great want for it that it was put m 
print. But ere this came to pass, some one else took 
up the same line of work, and told the his-to-ry of 
all the great clans. This too laid bare the facts of 
the rise of the Great Sho-guns, and brought forth 
the rights of the throne. It told its tales in such 
plain terms that some of the books had to be gone 
through and purged more than once ere the sage 
and well-read men at Yed-do (who had to judge and 
pass all works ere they could go out in print) would 
let it be put forth. 

Now, with these two great works on the past in 
their hands, and with the time to think that the long 
peace gave them, it is not strange that the Jap-a- 




A JAP-A-NESE WRI-TER. 



J 86 History of Japan. 

nese grew to ieel that their realm was In quite the 
wrong hands. Nor was this the sole wave that had 
set in to hold up the Mi-ka-do's rights to his folks. 
The priests, too, found more time for thought now, 
and not a few set to work to bring back the old 
Shin-to creeds as they had been held ere the Bud- 
dhist faith came to change their tone; for Bud-dhism 
made a vast chanoe in the Shm-to. This, of 
•course, brought folks to think more ot the ho-ly 
line of the Em-per-or, of the high rights of the 
throne, of what some of the Mi-ka-dos had done 
of old, and of the great men who had fought for 
them, and spent life, wealth and all m their cause. 
With this not a few of the well-learned men made up 
their minds to go back to the stud-y of the old Jap-a- 
nese books, and to make more of their own tongue, 
which for a long time had been quite put down by 
the use of the Chi-nese in books, in state pa-pers 
at court, and with all the folks of high rank. Now 
the Sho-guns tried to check this, but the Mi-da-do, 
the court lords at Ki-o-to, and some of the chief Sam- 
u-rai did all they could to help it on. They wrote 
a good deal, and in not a few of the chief fiefs of 
the realm their works drew the folks of mind and 
might to see the Mi-ka-do and the Sho-gun in a new 
light, and to think of plans to put down the rule of 
Yed-do and set up that of Ki-o-to. This rise of the 



TJie Lous' Peace. 



i3 



Shin-to schol-ars and the works that they wrote, with 
those of the Prince of Mi-to and his friends, led to 
a great change in the views of the Jap-a-nese, 
which at last threw down the whole scheme of Jap- 
a-nese Feu-dal-ism. In the course of years, with 
the calm that seemed to lie like a pall on their life, 
they grew to feel that they had gone back in their 
growth, while the rest of the world went on. The 
sea, which had once been like a wall to shut them in, 
had come to be the road that led strange ships to 
their shores; for not a few ship-wrecked Jap-a-nese 
got back to their homes on board A-mer-i-can boats, 
scores of which went by in sight of her coasts 
each year. The Rus-sians came down from the 
north and set up their claims to part of one of the 
north isles, and Eng-land, France, Hol-land and 
A-mer-i-ca all had a wish to trade with her. All 
these signs told the wise that some day ere long 
there would be a stir in Ja-pan, which if it came 
would end in the fall of the Sho-o^un. Now there 
were a few who felt that a war might be made on 
them some day by the " wild men " of the West and 
the New World. (Most of the Jap-a-nese thought 
all A-mer-i-cans and Eu-ro-pe-ans were a half-brute 
race, or '' wild men," as they said ; for they had been 
the curse of Ja-pan in the past; they had taught 
them of pow-der and fire-arms, and had been the 



1 88 History of -Japan. 

cause of a great deal of woe and blood-shed.) No 
plans were made at Yed-do to meet these ''wild men " 
if they should come, but not a few of the great dai- 
mi-os of the South thought it best not to wait for the 
Sho-gun's lead, and set to work to have their vast 
clans in trim in case of need. They had two needs 
in mind; one was to meet the "wild men" that they 
did not fear to speak of; but one that they had kept 
to them-selves was that the time might come ere long 
when the Mi-ka-do's own cause would want their 
arms. And if it were the home foes or the "brutes," 
one or both, they had made up their minds that 
their troops should be a match for an-y they might 
meet. These were men whose sires had been bred 
to arms for a-ges, and they were not so bound up in 
Ja-pan that they had not seen that the arts of warm 
the West were far a-head of their own ; and so, while 
the realm lay in a calm of peace the great chiefs of 
the South got the men who had learnt Dutch, and 
French, and Por-tu-guese, to put the books on the 
arts of war (which they had got hold of in some 
way) in-to the Chi-nese or Jap-a-nese tongue, so that 
they could learn from them how to dress and drill 
and fit out their troops as was done in the West. 

One of the chief of these dai-mi-os was the Prince 
of Mi-to — for that great house had in 1840 a prince 
who could well bear the name of him who wrote the 



The Long Peace. 



189 



His-to-ry of Ja-pan a hun-dred and fif-ty years be- 
fore. But he who took the real lead in plans to teach 
the Jap-a-nese the arts of the West was the Prince 
of Sat-su-ma. He was a man of brains, will and 
wealth. As a wise prince as well as a great and good 
one, whose peer could scarce be found in the realm, 




THE WAY THAT PLAIN FOLKS TRAV-EL. 



it was his aim to spread the stud-y of his-to-ry, as 
well as all the best Jap-a-nese works of an-y kind, 
through the realm. He spent time, wealth and 
thought on his fief to make it bring forth all it could, 
and got his troops in-to the best shape then known 
to Jap-a-nese men-at-arms; for he saw that the time 



190 History of Japan. 

would soon come to march on Yed-do. And he saw, 
too, more than most of the chiefs what would be the 
needs of the realm when that had been done, and so 
he did what he could to get young men to learn the 
Dutch and Eng-lish speech, and to find out through 
them what the rest of the world knew of the arts of 
war as well as of peace. He was king in his own 
fief, and did as he chose there, and of course no one 
thought to check his plans. He set up some mills 
and shops where great guns were cast as the Dutch 
made them. He saw that the young men of Ja-pan 
ought to go out and see the rest of the world and 
learn how things were done there; and by and by a 
score of the most bright youths of the land got 
off in one ship to Eu-rope, in spite of the Sho- 
gun's care and watch. Then some more slipped off 
to Eng-land and the U-nit-ed States. This prince was 
well known through all the realm, and young men 
went to him from all parts of the land, to be with 
him in his schools or to learn the arts or plain work- 
a-day trades which were not seen else-where in 
Ja-pan. His chief town was full of life, and in it 
were some of the most bright and well-learned folks 
and most skilled work-men in the whole realm. By 
this time it was plain to a large part of the Jap-a- 
nese that the time of the Yed-do rule was short, and 
the Prince of Sat-su-ma was to be the man to lead 



The Lons" Peace. 



191 



the out-break; but in 1858 he died, and his great 
work lell to the hands of those he had trained and 
taught — nor were they weak when their time came. 
All these great chiefs of the South were of stock 



<V « 5i? jSs^'^ 



^^*^J^^T?Q 



as old and as good as that of 

I-ye-ya-su, and though he had 

made his way to the head of 

the realm and the rest had had 

to bow to him, they did not 

love him nor his house an-y 

the more; and it was gall to 

their sons to be the slaves of 

his race. Some-times one or 

two of them would not do the 

Sho-gun's will, but step by 

step, from the first stage when 

they were his "friends," and 

went toYed-do ashis "guests," 

till now when they were as his 

slaves whom he bade come and 

pay court to him, the To-ku- 

ga-wa had borne down on the 

Dai-mi-OS a bit more hard each 

tmie till now there was but one way to free the realm 

from their grasp, and that was to break out on 

them in a vast host, raze Yed-do to the ground, 

tear down the Sho-gun's throne, and drive the race 




A MAN OF THE CIT-Y IN WIN-TER DRESS, 



192 History of Japan. 

of I-ye-ya-su forth to find lodge where they might 
— or death if they should face round. 

This they had grown to feel that they would do if 
the worst came to pass. But for a long time they 
kept it all in their own breasts, like a fire in a mound, 
while in a still way things went on in-side to make 
the heat more fierce, and e-vents took shape with the 
Sho-eun and the rest of the realm that were to 
wake the flame at last to do the most that a-ny of 
them dreamt of. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE LAST WAR AND THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE. 

Most folks think that our Com-mo-dore Per-ry 
was the sole cause of the late war in Ja-pan ; but 
that was not the case. We know that the clans had 
long been in wait for a chance to break out on the 
Sho-gun, and they found it when he let him-self pass 
for the Em-per-or with Com-mo-dore Per-ry. To be 
sure it was our brave sea-man who ofot the realm to 
un-lock her ports to the world, and the long peace 
came to an end in a great fight on the folks who 
went there from A-mer-i-ca and the West ; but not 



The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 193 

a few of the Sam-u-ral and the dai-mi-os who led in 
the war were glad to have the "wild men" come, 
and what they fought for was to break down the Sho- 
gun rule and set up that of the Mi-ka-do. It was 
they and no one else who brought on this last dread 
war of the realm of isles. But the A-mer-i-cans lit 
their fuse; and this is how they did it and how the 
shell burst. 

In the sum-mer of 1853 the still air of Yed-do Bay 
woke one July day to shrill sound that came from the 
pipes of a fleet of A-mer-i-can steam-ships. Their 
chief would not go round to the port of Na-ga-sa-ki, 
off which lay the isle of the Dutch, when he was 
told to, but he in terms that no one could call rude, 
said he would stay where he was. He sent some 
gifts to the Em-per-or of Ja-pan, with let-ters in 
which he asked in the name of the Pres-i-dent that 
the Em-per-or would be friends with the U-nit-ed 
States, and come to some terms of trade with her. 
Now these did not get to the Em-per-or at all, but 
to the Sho-gun, who took them and read them and 
went so far as to act on them all by him-self, for he 
said, " I am in the place of the Em-per-or, and 
things may not go well for me if these new folks 
think I am not he." So, when he had made up his 
mind what to say to our brave Com-mo-dore, he sent 
a man of much note who taught in one of the great 



1 94 History of Japan. 

schools of Yed-do to treat with him ; and this man, 
to give his lord a big name in the eyes of the strange 
folks, let his men speak of him as the " Tai-kun," a 
Chi-nese word which means '' great prince " or 
*' high lord," and if used at all was not due an-y 
one but the Mi-ka-do. But it was a term that meant 
no real rank to the Jap-a-nese, and so the Sho-gun 
told them, but to Per-ry he let it stand for the 
same as Em-per-or. Now our Com-mo-dore knew 
that there was a Mi-ka-do at the head of the realm, 
but he thought him a sort of pope, or chief priest, 
while the ''Ty-coon" was the Em-per-or of the 
state. So when he came back home he felt that 
he had made the right terms, and that all had been 
well done to make Ja-pan and A-mer-i-ca good 
friends. But this was far from the case ; for while 
the Sho-gun held the reins of rule there was no 
name but the Mi-ka-do's that stood for the Jap-a- 
nese Em-pire. It was not at all the voice of the realm 
that said yes to the great change. They are not head- 
long folks, and it was a vast thing to them to break 
the seal that had so long shut out the rest of the world 
for the fact that those whom they had once let in had 
done them harm and had laid plots to make them 
slaves to some strange king whom they had not seen 
and scarce heard of. And more than that, the Mi-ka- 
do and his court were full of wrath at the lie the Sho- 



The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 195 

gun had told when he let him-self pass for the Em- 
per-or. The To-ku-ga-wa gave a great poke them- 
selves to stir up the fires that lay in the depths of 
the great clans of the South ; but still they were 
kept hid and peace lay on the realm for some years. 
The realms of Eu-rope sent their ships in the wake 
of Per-ry's Sus-que-han-na, and it was not long ere 
some of the best ports of Ja-pan were bound to let 
the ''beasts" and "wild men" of the world come 
and go as they might choose. But, in 1859, when 
the ships came and a real flood of trade set in, the 
realm woke from its long sleep with such a shock as 
it had not known in all its life. In the first place 
the folks had not thought that all these* ships would 
want to bear off so much goods as they did to their 
own ports. So when they had bought up their loads 
there was not much left and the cost of plain things rose 
so high that the poor could not have them, and that 
brought want and woe at once. At the same time 
the land was swept by earth-quakes, storms, floods, 
and fires, all of which the mass of folks felt to be due 
in some way to the '' wild men " whom the Sho-gun 
had let come to their ports. In the midst of all this 
woe and want and fright the Sho-gun died, and left 
the choice of a new one to his Re-gent. Now of 
the two young men of the To-ku-ga-wa whom the 
lords thought of to take the post, the Re-gent chose 



196 History of Japan. 

the one whom some of the chief dai-mi-os did not 
want ; and when they made some fuss a-bout it he 
put them in jail ; and with them not a fe\/ of the 
best Sam-u-rai in the realm — men of state, chiefs at 
arms, and some who were most sage and well-learned 
— were put in bonds, sent to far-off parts of the 
realm, or had their heads cut off. The Re-gent was 
in great straits, for he knew that the terms with the 
out-side world could not hold good with-out the Mi- 
ka-do's own name to them ; and while the ''brutes" 
made loud calls to have their treat-ies made good, the 
Mi-ka-do and Court would have naught to do with 
them. At last, in fear that the "wild men" might force 
their way in ^nd make no end of bad work, he set 
his own seal to the terms he had made and sent 
word to Ki-o-to that he had done so. At this the 
wrath of the Court broke forth and a cry of hail to 
the Mi-ka-do and out with the '' wild men " went 
from end to end of the realm. The Re-gent had 
been false to his chief, it was felt ; and all through 
the land thou-sands left their homes and said they 
would not go back to them till the Mi-ka-do, with the 
rule in his own hands, should drive out the strange 
folks who had come in on them. Then there was a 
time of strife and blood-shed, when the land swarmed 
with bands of low-caste men, armed and in for fight, 
with no heed for the laws of the land or of man to 



The Last War and the Daw7i of a New Age. 



197 



man. The Re-gent was slain, and so were scores of 
folks from the out-side world. The Sho-gun's sway 
was on the wane ; few of the clans held to the Sho- 
gun, while the eyes of most of the realm were bent 
on the throne, and the will of the Mi-ka-do was that 
for which the folks gave ear. The dai-mi-os of the 
South came out strong 
and left Yed-do to make 
Ki-o-to their seat, as it 
was that of the Court. 
They put funds in the 
chest of the throne; their 
troops — the best in the 
realm — were at the Mi- 
ka-do's call. All at 
once the Yed-do chiefs 
said they would close 
the ports and get the 
folks of the West to 
leave Ja-pan ; and they 
sent some men to Eu- 
rope to see to this ; but in the mean-time, at the 
wish of the Ku-ge, the Mi-ka-do sent forth word that 
all who were not Jap-a-nese should leave the realm. 
Then arms were raised on their ships by the Cho- 
shi-u clan ; the Sho-gun sent word that they should 
not be fired on, but they were. The Sho-gun's 




LA-DY IN THE RAIN. 



198 History of Japan. 

might was gone; the Mi-ka-do was come. This was 
in Ju-ly, and through the rest of that sum-mer the 
two sides stood in arms face to face, and with each 
the ill-will and dread of some-thing worse to come 
grew and grew. In the fall new ills came. The 
Sho-gun side said that the Cho-shi-u, with some of 
the Ku-ge, had laid a plot to get hold of the Mi- 
ka-do and set up their own rule be-hind the throne, 
as had been done in the past. This drew on them the 
wrath of all the Yed-do clans, and put them in a bad 
light, for they could not get clear ol such a grave charge 
at once, since thevhad tried to have the Mi-ka-do leave 
Ki-o-to and take the lead of their troops. The clans 
thus paired, the realm was in a bad state for some 
time, and in mid-sum-mer of 1864 at the gates of 
Ki-o-to they came to a fight which was kept up for 
two days with great strife and loss of life. It was 
lost to the Cho-shi-u and gave the Sho-gun's band 
one more taste of their strength, though that strength 
would have been much less if it had been used to 
hold up their own throne in place of the Mi-ka-do's. 
In the same month a fleet which bore the flags of 
four na-tions of the out-side world sent out its fire 
and shell on the fort of the Cho-shi-u till it beat 
them down and paid them off for their fire of the 
same month in the year past. But their ranks 
were fine and well-drilled, their hearts were true, and 




THE FIN-ISH-ING TOUCH. 



200 History of Japan. 

they were not to fail in the end. It was an all sum- 
mer's fight with them and the Sho-gun side, which 
came to an end with loss and rout and shame to the 
To-ku-ga-wa, and the last fall of their sway. The 
poor young Sho-gun whom the Re-gent had set up, 
worn out with his cares, died in the fall, and left one 
thing done — he had got the Mi-ka-do to say he 
would make terms with Eu-rope and A-mer-i-ca^ 
but they must be his own terms, not the Sho-gun's. 
The young man who next took this post was the 
one whom the Ku-re had made choice of m the first 
place ; and when he had been in it some eight 
months one of the chiefs most true to the Mi-ka-do, 
got him to give it up. This was one great step 
in the way of the full sway of the Mi-ka-do. But 
there was much still to be done ; for the gates of 
the Pal-ace were in the guard of a clan that was 
the most staunch and true of all that still held to 
the To-ku-ga-wa; and as they had the Mi-kado 
they were yet at the head of the realm. The 
chiefs of the great clans of the South would not rest 
till the work that had gone so far should be well 
done, and they made up their minds to work as one 
band and by a bold stroke to wipe out the post of 
Sho-gun and the might of Yed-do, and to give full 
sway to the throne on which now sat the young Em- 
per-or Mut-su-hi-to. It was on the third of Jan-u-a-ry, 



The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 201 

1868, that they did it. The troops of these chiefs 
by a quick move took up their posts at the gates of 
the Pal-ace, sent out the Ku-ge who were in wait on 
the boy Em-per-or and would let no one go through 
the gates but those who held the same views as their 
chiefs. The Court was swept clean of all who 
would set up aught but the Mi-ka-do's rule ; and 
from the throne there went forth the good news 
that the Em-per-or and his Court would now have 
sole rule of the realm, and that there was no such 
thing' in Ja-pan as the Yed-do sway or the post of 
Great Sho-gun. The Cho-shi-u clan was brought 
back to its right place with the Ku-ge, cleared of the 
charge that they had laid a plot to get hold of the 
Mi-ka-do; and the brave chiefs, as well as the young 
men who had run off to Eu-rope and our own land, 
were put in posts of trust. 

The Yed-do clans were full of rage; they got 
their ex-Sho-gun to make war on Ki-o-to and get 
back what they had lost ; but it was no use. A 
fight of three days took place, but the Sho-gun side 
lost and fled with their chief to O-za-ka, whose 
cas-tle was burned by the troops of Mi-ka-do's clans. 
He found a place on an A-mer-i-can ship and got at 
last to his home at Yed-do. Then, in spite of all 
that his clan-chiefs could do to urge him to keep up 
the fio^ht, he held firm to this, that he would nev-er 



202 History of Japan. 

more make war on his lord, the Mi-ka-do. He 
gave up all thoughts of a pub-lie life from that 
day, and said the rest of his years should be spent 
as were those of the men of his caste. By this 
he saved Yed-do from the torch, which was lit for it 
when word was sent that the Sho-gun gave up all 
his claims; and by this he saved Ja-pan from a long 
home-war. A few clans still held out, but they were 
soon put down, and by the ist of Ju-ly, 1869, the 
realm once more was a land of peace. 

Then came that task that comes in the wake of 
all great home-wars when the side of a new cause 
wins : the Mi-ka-do and his new Court had to fit 
the old realm to the new state of things. All 
grades had their cries. One said send out the 
" brutes" ; the Shin-to priests would have the Chris- 
tians dealt with, the Bud-dhists put down, and 
the new rule set up by the pure Shin-to creeds. 

It was the young men who, in spite of all the 
Sho-gun's threats, had learnt the speech, the thoughts 
and some of the ways of the Eu-ro-pe-ans, who took 
it on them-selves to set the Ku-ore ri^ht as to the 
"brutes," and to show the Mi-ka-do and Court, as 
well as the rest of the realm, how much it would be 
to the good of Ja-pan to make much of the folks 
from the West, and to take up with some of their 
thoughts and ways. They asked the am-bas-sa-dors, 



The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 



203 



or men who had been sent to Ja-pan to act for their 
na-tions, to go and see the Mi-ka-do. Two of them 
went, and the Ku-ge were won by the first sight of 
them and "made friends with the men they once 
thouo^ht were beasts." It was a hard task for the 
3^oung men who set out to do this, for the folks were 
all much down 



on the strange 
men ; and it was 
no small task to 
o^et them safe to 
Ki-o-to. A band 
of 1 o w - c 1 a s s 
youths fell on 
one train to slay 
them, but he who 
went first lost his 
head by the 
sweep of the 
sword of one of 




/L-'^ 



A HAND CAR-RIAGE OR JIN-RIK-I-SHA. 



the brave young lords, who had made up his mind 
that come what might the Mi-ka-do and the Ku- 
ge should see what the Eu-ro-pe-ans were like. 

Then a let-ter was sent out by one of these same 
brave young lords, that set forth to the Court, dai- 
mi-os and all the folks some of the new views on 
which it was their wish to base the new form of rule. 



20-I- History of Japan. 

This is what the letter said: Since the Mid-die 
A-ges our Em-per-or has dwelt with a screen in 
front of him and has not trod the earth. Naught 
of what went on in front of his screen got to his ear ; 
his whole house was shut out from the world. Not 
more than a few lords of the Court could go near 
the throne. This is not like the laws of Heav-en; 
and now while we hold him none the less in awe 
and love, let us put off pomp and false forms and be 
plain and right in what we do. Ki-o-to is an out-of- 
the-way place and not fit to be the seat of rule. So 
let our lord move and make his home in O-za-ka, 
have his Court there and thus cure one of the hun- 
dred wrongs that have come to us from the past. 

To speak of such a plan gave a great shock at 
first; but the Mi-ka-do did come out from be-hind 
his screen, and with the lords of the Court and dai- 
mi-os took an oath that things should be done by the 
voice of the folks ; that the rough, rude forms of 
rule they had held to so long should be done with ; 
and that the new ones should be fair and just to all! 
He said they would search the whole world for 
breadth and depth of thought, for sound, wise views ; 
and for such arts and learning as would best aid them' 
to build up the new Em-pire. 

There has not been long to test this new plan yet ; 
but there is no doubt that the Em-per-or and' his 



The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 205 

staunch- friends meant all they said and much more. 
Books and the news press were not shut down. 
The Jap-a-nese who wrote found they had naught to 
dread if they said what they thought. They were 
told to speak out that they might be a means to teach 
the folks what this new state of things was for and 
to help on in the good work. The Em-per-or 
would treat all men, e-ven those who had held to his 
old foes, on kind, just terms, and not a few of the 
To-ku-ga-wa clan were asked to take posts of note in 
the realm. To all the dai-mi-os of the lost cause 
he gave back rank and funds. 

But day by day it came to be more plain to be 
seen that the realm could not rest in peace and 
reach the growth in the way of the new life it had 
learnt to hope for as long as feu-dal-ism should last. 
Clan strength would break that of the throne. 
This was what the press took up, and not a few of 
the dai-mi-os who had felt the same thing for a 
long while now saw that the time had come to act ; 
and, led by the chief clans, they all sent word to 
the Mi-ka-do that they would give up their fiefs 
and their troops as the right of the throne, and be 
plain men from that time on. They said that in 
their new life one-tenth of the funds they had had 
would be all they should need, and the rest 
should be put in his own chests; for the realm 



2o6 History of Japan. 

was none too rich, and it cost much to put through 
all these new plans. This was set on foot by Prince 
A-kid-zu-ki, and ere long the whole 264 dai-mi-os 
gave up their fiefs and troops and vast wealth to be 
plain Ka-zo-ku (no-ble-men). Thus the lands, the 
great hosts of men-at-arms, and large tax went at 
once to the throne to help on the work of its new life ; 
to bind all parts of the realm in-to one whole, whose 
sole head was the Mi-ka-do. Yed-do, or To-ki-o, the 
East-ern cap-i-tal, came to be the seat of the Court; 
plans for a rail-road were thought of; young men 
were sent to Eu-rope and this land to be taught. 
Col-leg-es and schools in all the crafts and arts and 
lore known to the folks of the West were set up in 
the towns of Ja-pan, and folks who could teach were 
asked to go from Eu-rope and A-mer-i-ca to take 
charge of them. Scores of new ways were put 
in place of the old; and e-ven the Mi-ka-do came 
out and was seen by crowds of folks of all grades 
when the first trains were put on the Grand Trunk 
Rail-way from To-ki-o to Yo-ko-ha-ma. 



GLOSSARY. 



Spelled. Pronounced. 

Ad-zu-ma . . . . . . Ad-zu-ma. 

Ai-no ...... Ai-n6. 

A-kid-zu-ki A-kid-zu-ki. 

Am-e A-me. 

Ash-i-ka-ga . - . . . Ash-i-ka-ga. 

Au-ji-ro ..... Au-gi-ro. 

Bi-wa Be-va. 

Bi-dat-su . . . . . Be-dat-su. 

Bu-ret-su . . . . . Bu-ret-su. 

Chi-u-ai ..... Chi-u-di. 

Chin ...... Shin. 

Cho-shi-u ..... Cho-shi-u. 

Dai-mi-o ..... Ddi-mi-6. 

Dis-hi-ma Di-shi-ma. 

Fu-ji-wa-ra ..... Fu-gi-wa-ra. 

Fu-ku-i ..... Fu-ku-i". 

Gen ...... Gen. 

Go-Dai-go-Ten-no . . . Go-Dai-go-Ten-no. 

Go-ro-za ...... Go-ro-sa. 

Go-to-ba ...... Go-to-ba. 

Ha-ko-ne ... He-kd-ne. 

He-ro ... . . He-ro. 

Hi-de-yosh-i ..... Hi-d6-yos-si. 

Hi-u-go Hi-6-go. 

Hi-ye-zan ..... Hi-ye-zan. 



^T^'A. 



2o8 



Glossary. 



Spelled. 

Ho-jo . 
Hon-do 
Ho-o . 
Ho-so-ka-wa 

I-bu-ki Ka-ma 

Id-zu 

I-ke-da . 

I-ki 

I-se 

I -ye-y as-u 

Jim-mu Ten-no 
Jiu-gu Ko-go 

Ka-i . ■ . 

Kadrzu-sa 

Ka-ma-ku-ra 

Ka-mi 

Ka-mo 

Kash-i-wa-ba-ra 

Ka-wa-dri 

Ke-i-ko 

Ki-na-i 

Ki-o-mo-ri 

Ki-o-to 

Kir-ish-i-ma 

Ki-u-shi-u 

Ku-am-ba-ku 

Ku-an-to 

Ku-ge 

Ku-ma-so 

Ku-man-o 

Ku-sun-o-ki 

Mas-as-hi-ge 
Mich-i-a-ri 



Pronounced. 

' H6-g6. 
Hon-dii. 
Hc-6. 
IIo-o6-ka-wa. 

E-b6-ki Ya-ma. 

Ed-zii. 

E-ke-da. 

E-ke. 

E-se. 

E-ye-ya-shu. 

Gem-mu Ten-no, 
I-iu-gu Ka-ge. 

Ka-i. 

Kad-zu-sd. 

Ka-ma-ku-rd. 

Ka-me. 

Ka-mo. 

Kash-i-wa.-ba-ra. 

Ka-wa-dri. 

Ke-i-ko. 

Ke-na-i. 

Ke-6-mo-ri. 

Ke-6-to. 

Kir-ish-i-ma. 

Ki-u-shi-u. 

Ku-am-ba-ku. 

Ku-an-to. 

Ku-ge. 

Ku-ma-so. 

Ku-ma-no. 

Ku-su-no-ki. 

Ma-sa-shi-ge. 
Mi-shi-a-ri. 



Cr 


iossary. 


■Spelled. 


Pronounced. 


Mi-ka-do .... 


. Mi-ka-do. 


Min-a-mo-to 


Min-a-mo-to. 


Mi-no .... 


. Mi-no. 


JVIi-sa-za-ka Shi-ra-to-ri 


Mi-sa-za-ka Shi-ra-to-ri 


Mi-to .... 


Mi-to. 


Mo-ri-a ..... 


M6-re-a. 


Mo-ri-yo-shi 


Mo-ri-yo-shi. 


Mut-su . ■ . 


Moot-shoo. 


Mut-su-hi-to 


Moot-shoo-hi-to. 


Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da 


Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da. 


Ni-pon .... 


Ni-hon. 


No-bo-no .... 


No-bo-no. 


No-bun-a-ga 


No-boo-na-ga. 


O-jin . . ... 


O-gin. 


O-ki . . . . 


. 0-ky. 


Ot-su ..... 


Ot-su. 


O-ua-ri .... 


O-wa-ri. 


O-za-ka ..... 


O-za-ka. 


O-zu-mi . . - . 


O-zu-mi. 


Sa-ku-rai .... 


Sha-ku-rai. 


Sa-mau-rai 


Sha-mu-rai. 


Sat-sLi-ma .... 


Sat-su-ma. 


Se-i-mu .... 


Se-"i-moo. 


Se-ki-ga-ha-ra 


Se-ki-ga-ha-ra. 


Shi-ba-ta .... 


. Shi-ba-ta. 


Shi-mo-sa .... 


Shi-mo-sa. 


Shi-na-no 


Shi-na-no. 


Shin-to 


Shin-to. 


Shi-ra-ki . ■ . 


Shi-ra-ki. 


Sho-gun .... 


Sho-gun. 


Shik-ken . . . . ' 


Shik-ken. 


Su-jin { . . . . 


Shu-gin. 


Sung .... 


Shung. 



209 



Ta-chi-ba-na Hi-me 



Ta-chi-ba-na Hy-me. 



^^ 



2IO 



Glossary. 



Spelled. 

Tai-ko 

Ta-i-ro . 

Tak-au-ji . 

Ta-ta-ra . 

Ten-shi 

To-ki-ma-sa 

To-ki-o 

To-ku-ga-wa 

Toy-o-to-mi 

Tsush-i-ma 



Pronounced. 

Tai-ko. 

Ta-i-ro. 

Tak-a-u-gi. 

Ta-ta-ra. 

Ten-shi. 

To-ki-ma-sa. 

T6-ki-6. 

To-ku-ga-wa. 

Toy-o-to-mi. 

Tsu-shi-ma. 



U-ji _ . 
Us-u-i To-S:e 



U-gi. 

U-sui T6-se. 



Yosh-i-mit-su 
Yosh-it-su-iie ' 
Yo-ri-i-ye 
Yo-ri-to-mo 
Yu-ma-to-Da-ke 



Yosh-i-mit-su. 

Yosli-it-su-ne. 

Yo-ri-i-ye. 

Yo-ri-to-mo. 

Yu-ma-to-Da-ke. 



pOUTLEDGE'S HISTORICAL COURSE 



T 



IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE. By Mrs. Helen W. Pierson. 
EacH book containing about 325 pages. With Illustrations and Maps 
Price per volume, $1.00. 

HE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



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H 



ISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



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OME LESSONS; OR, LEARNING MADE PLEAS- 

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George" Routledge & Sons, 

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